In late March, the Interior Department informed the tribe it would remove its land from trust status. The tribe asked the federal court to issue an emergency order that would postpone that decision. Friedman heard arguments on that request and on the lawsuit May 20. The Interior Department must take a second look at the tribe’s case using the so-called M-Opinion, Friedman wrote, and evaluate all the evidence in concert rather than in isolation. The M-Opinion sets guidelines the department had been using since 2014 to determine whether a tribe was under federal jurisdiction at the time of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 — a qualification for land-in-trust status. In March, the deputy solicitor for Indian Affairs, Daniel H. Jorjani, withdrew the opinion and issued a new four-step procedure for determining tribal eligibility.