New York State has gone to federal court to strip sovereign status from Seneca Nation of Indians land in Buffalo and on Grand Island, in twin lawsuits filed on Friday against the U.S. Department of the Interior that strike at the legal foundation of a gas station, convenience store and cannabis dispensary the Nation is already building in Buffalo's Old First Ward.

The Buffalo lawsuit challenges a 2023 Interior Department decision that gave restricted-fee status to two parcels at 5 Miami Street and 124 Chicago Street. Restricted-fee status places land under tribal sovereignty and generally shields it from state and local property taxes, zoning rules and permitting. It is that status that allows the Seneca One Stop project — valued at more than $10 million, with a fuel station, a convenience store and a cannabis dispensary — to rise outside Buffalo's building codes and tax rolls.

The second lawsuit challenges a February 2026 Interior decision covering 207 acres at Long Road and Bedell Road on Grand Island, in the Niagara River between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. The Nation acquired that land in December 2025 for $1, in what was publicly described as a donation from a commercial developer whose own plans for the site had stalled. A smaller Seneca One Stop has operated on restricted-fee land on Perry Street in Buffalo since 2020.

What the state is arguing

The state's complaints argue that the Interior Department incorrectly classified both sets of parcels as restricted-fee land under the Seneca Nation Settlement Act of 1990, the federal law that resolved a dispute over expired Seneca land leases in Salamanca and other communities and set up a mechanism — backed by a finite pool of federal money — for the Nation to acquire land with sovereign status. New York argues that land-acquisition funding authority expired years ago and that the money pool had almost dried up decades ago, that the Grand Island purchase was never verified as bought with Settlement Act funds, and that Grand Island is not near former Seneca land. If the designations stand, the state says, it also loses authority over matters such as wetlands, sewers and property tax collection on the parcels.

The Seneca Nation answered sharply. Its leaders condemned the lawsuits as the same anti-Seneca treatment the Nation says it has received from the Hochul administration and from past governors. Nation President J. Conrad Seneca has said the Miami Street property is Seneca land "now and forever." In court filings in the related city case, the Nation's lawyers have argued that Interior properly placed the Buffalo parcel in restricted-fee status in February 2023, that the Nation notified the state, Erie County and the city of its plans in December 2022 without objection, and that the Perry Street store has operated since 2020 without city regulation.

A fight that was already in the courts

The state suits land on top of a dispute Buffalo started itself. Mayor Sean Ryan announced on October 7, 2026 that the city had sued in state Supreme Court to stop construction of the Seneca One Stop at 5 Miami Street, citing strain on city infrastructure, effects on nearby businesses, the burden on Buffalo Police and threats to environmental remediation; the city sued the Interior Department in federal court the following day, and the city had earlier issued stop-work orders the Nation ignored. Construction began in September and the Nation expects completion in summer 2027. On October 26, State Supreme Court Justice Donna Siwek denied the city's request for a preliminary injunction and allowed work to continue — the second time a judge has refused to block the project, according to the Buffalo News — while acknowledging that the city's zoning, planning and environmental concerns were reasonable. Ryan has said the city will keep pursuing its litigation. The Town of Grand Island has also sued the federal government earlier this year over the Long Road parcel.

Why it matters and what happens next

For Buffalo neighbours and nearby businesses, the case is about tax fairness and local control: a tax-exempt competitor operating under different rules, on land the city cannot zone, inspect or tax. For the Seneca Nation — a sovereign government that also runs casinos in western New York under a gaming compact with the state — it is about whether federally protected land status, once granted, can be clawed back by the state every time a project proves unpopular locally. Lawyers familiar with Indian law note the state faces a substantial burden in persuading a court that the Interior Department erred, because the federal cases will be decided on administrative-law grounds: judges will review whether the agency followed the Settlement Act and its own rules, not whether the project is good for Buffalo.

No hearing date has been announced in either new federal case. Construction at Miami Street continues in the meantime, protected by the October injunction ruling, and the Grand Island land keeps its status unless a court removes it. Whatever the outcome, the ruling is expected to reach beyond these two sites: it will signal how much room New York — and by extension other states — has to contest future tribal land acquisitions that sit outside state and local tax and zoning authority.