California native tribe says county duped them into dubious $12 million airport land deal

That won’t fly.

A California native tribe is accusing Riverside County of fraud and racial discrimination after the county passed a law barring them from negotiating access to an airport next to its property, according to a lawsuit obtained by Law360.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians claim that after they spent $12 million to purchase 612 acres of land adjacent the Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport in Thermal, Calif., Riverside County sneakily passed a resolution blocking them from entering into a Through-the Fence (TTF) agreement with the airport.

A TTF agreement allows private property owners to taxi aircrafts from their land and onto a nearby airport’s runaways.

The tribe says the Riverside County Board of Supervisors adopted the law, Resolution No. 2025-230, “on rushed notice” in August 2025. They also say the resolution does not comply with Federal Aviation Administration policies.

The suit also says the airport provides other groups — like the H.N. and Frances C. Berger Foundation — access to the airport, but denies the tribe the same opportunities.

“The result is a government-engineered bait-and-switch that strips the tribe of the access opportunity that justified the purchase, not to serve any FAA mandate, but to needlessly advantage incumbent airport tenants,” the Twenty-Nine Palms Band said in the suit.

The six-count suit accuses the county and its board of fraudulent inducement, regulatory taking, racial discrimination in contract, equal protection, substantive due process and fraud violations.

“The county discriminated against the tribe in contracting, denied equal protection by treating the tribe worse than a similarly situated private through-the-fence user without any rational basis, and deprived the tribe of substantive due process through arbitrary, irrational, and conscience-shocking action,” the lawsuit read.

The tribe says it attempted to negotiate a TTF agreement with the county for more than a year after purchasing the property, proposing a three-party agreement among the county, the tribe and 29 Aviation LLC, a Twenty-Nine Palms Band charter company, for commercial TTF access.

After the county passed the resolution, the Berger Foundation voiced opposition to the law, and its concerns were heard, highlighting the county’s ability to negotiate.

“That warning prompted county staff to acknowledge the overbreadth of the proposed language,” the tribe said.

“The Berger TTF showed that access from adjacent property could be managed through negotiated restrictions, fee structures, and county control; and the Berger Foundation’s opposition put the county on notice that the proposed resolution was sweeping and threatened existing access rights as well as the tribe’s proposed FAA-compliant path,” the lawsuit said.

The tribe is requesting the court terminate the TTF resolution, return the $12 million purchase price and lost development value and provide compensation for the regulatory taking, as well as attorney fees.

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