James Douglas Elliott

The case concerned a woman born in the United States in 1871 who married a Norwegian citizen in 1896, resided in Norway until his death in 1921, and returned to the US in 1925, filing a petition to determine her citizenship status under the Act of September 22, 1922. The court decided that she had not been expatriated and remained a US citizen. The core reasoning was that, prior to the Act of March 2, 1907, no statute provided for loss of citizenship through marriage to an alien, so common-law rules applied under which a citizen could not renounce allegiance without governmental consent via legislation; her pre-1907 marriage and residence abroad therefore had no effect, and later statutes did not retroactively alter that status.

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The case involved the United States suing Dewey County, South Dakota, to recover personal property taxes paid by several members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe on property issued to them by the federal government under the Dawes Act and Burke Act. The court ruled in favor of the United States, ordering the county to account for and repay the taxes collected from the Indians, plus interest, with the funds to be distributed to the affected individuals. The decision rested on findings that the taxes were unlawfully assessed against the Indians' exempt issue property and that the county's collection efforts violated due process. The court further held that the United States could maintain the suit in its capacity as guardian of the Indian wards to prevent dissipation of their estates and to avoid multiple individual lawsuits.

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