TULSA, Okla. – The Cherokee Nation filed a civil action against the Department of Interior Wednesday over a decision to grant another tribe’s land in trust application.

Filed in the Northern District Court of Oklahoma, the tribe and its business, Cherokee Nation Entertainment, are asking that the Department of Interior rescind and renounce a July 30 approval of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians’ land in trust application for 2.03 acres in Tahlequah, Okla., where the tribe’s casino has been in business for more than 25 years and generated more than $5 million in wages last year.

That decision was handed down hours before the casino was scheduled to close under an agreement with Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt.

“The department’s bootstrap reason – that it is the ongoing conduct of an illegal gaming operation that provides the basis for a finding of a ‘need’ for a proposed trust acquisition in order to cure the illegality of the gaming – is arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion and contrary to the law,” Cherokee Nation Attorney General Todd Hembree wrote in Wednesday’s filing.

In the approval letter, acting Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Michael Black also wrote that the United Keetoowah Band and Cherokee Nation have equal jurisdiction across 14 counties in northeastern Oklahoma.

“The secretary’s ‘former reservation’ conclusion is contrary to an unbroken line of prior departmental rulings and to a series of decisions by this court,” Hembree wrote. “This conclusion, however, was the basis for the department’s unlawful decision to approve the acquisition of 2.03 acres of land located within the last treaty boundaries of the nation…for the use and benefit of the United Keetoowah Band Corporation.”

Wednesday’s filing only named Black and Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar as defendants. The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians is not listed.