Tribal citizenship applications from Cherokee freedmen descendants will not be processed yet, a tribal district court judge ruled Friday.
Judge John Cripps, who ruled last month that the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma had to accept applications from freedmen descendants disenfranchised by a March 2007 citizenship referendum, ruled in favor of the tribe’s request to extend a temporary injunction against processing new applications from the affected group.
The approximately 2,800 freedmen descendants who were tribal citizens before the referendum’s passage will still retain all rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship.
To date, the Cherokee Nation has received about 3,500 applications from freedmen descendants. The tribe is still accepting applications but will not begin to process them until after the tribe’s Supreme Court rules on the matter.
The temporary injunction was issued in 2007 after the referendum’s passage. With Friday’s ruling, it is extended through the end of the appeals process
Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20110218_11_0_TAHLEQ629568
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