Thread by @cwychar

In *Suzanne Hicks v. Hudson Insurance Company* (No. 14-283, Oklahoma Supreme Court, decided June 12, 2014), the issue centered on a workers’ compensation dispute involving a Native American tribe. Hicks, an employee of a tribal entity, sought benefits through Hudson Insurance,

the tribe’s insurer. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the tribe’s sovereign immunity did not extend to Hudson Insurance, as the insurer was a private entity and not an arm of the tribe. The court clarified that while tribes can claim immunity from lawsuits, third-party

insurers like Hudson don’t automatically inherit that protection unless they’re acting directly as tribal agents. This allowed Hicks’ claim to proceed against the insurer in state court.

There’s no evidence that Suzanne Hicks v. Hudson Insurance Company (Oklahoma Supreme Court, No. 112,532, decided June 12, 2014) has been explicitly overruled. It remains a relevant precedent in Oklahoma for cases involving tribal sovereign immunity and third-party insurers.

The ruling clarified that private insurers, like Hudson, don’t inherit a tribe’s immunity unless they’re directly acting as tribal agents, allowing claims against them in state court. As for citations, Hicks v. Hudson has been referenced in a few subsequent Oklahoma cases.

For instance, in Montgomery v. Cherokee Nation Enterprises (2016), the court cited Hicks to support the principle that non-tribal entities, like insurers, aren’t automatically covered by tribal immunity. Another case, Williams v. Cherokee Nation Casino (2018), used Hicks to

distinguish between tribal entities and their third-party contractors or insurers when determining jurisdiction for workers’ compensation claims. These cases reinforce Hicks’s holding that insurers face liability in state courts despite tribal involvement. I couldn’t find

U.S. Supreme Court cases directly citing Hicks, likely because it’s a state-level decision, but its reasoning aligns with federal precedents like Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma v. Manufacturing Technologies (1998), which limits immunity to tribes themselves.

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