Cite as: 526 U. S. 473 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
to consider its merits.5 Yet the injunction has no practical significance without a determination whether respondents' causes of action are as a matter of law Price-Anderson claims under the terms of 42 U. S. C. §§ 2210(n)(2) and 2014(hh). This question the District Court declined to answer, thinking that the doctrine of tribal-court exhaustion required it to abstain from deciding a question of tribal-court jurisdiction until the Tribal Courts themselves had addressed the matter. The Court of Appeals approved the abstention on the theory that the comity rationale underlying the tribal exhaustion doctrine applied. See 136 F. 3d, at 613-615, 620. We think, however, that it does not.
National Farmers Union Ins. Cos. v. Crow Tribe, 471 U. S. 845 (1985), was a suit involving the federal-question jurisdiction of a United States District Court under 28 U. S. C. § 1331, brought to determine "whether a tribal court has the power to exercise civil subject-matter jurisdiction over non-Indians," 471 U. S., at 855. We held, initially, that federal courts have authority to determine, as a matter "arising under" federal law, see 28 U. S. C. § 1331, whether a tribal court has exceeded the limits of its jurisdiction. See 471 U. S., at 852-853. After concluding that federal courts have subject-matter jurisdiction to entertain such a case, we announced that, prudentially, a federal court should stay its hand "until after the Tribal Court has had a full opportunity to determine its own jurisdiction." Id., at 857. In justification of a prudential requirement of tribal exhaustion, we stated that "the existence and extent of a tribal court's jurisdiction will require a careful examination of tribal sovereignty, the extent to which that sovereignty has been
5 Although we do not reach the merits of the injunction, candor requires acknowledging that our view of the inappropriateness of applying tribal exhaustion, adumbrated infra, at 485-487, suggests that, notwithstanding the silence of the Price-Anderson Act with respect to tribal courts, the exercise of tribal jurisdiction over claims found to fall within the Act once a defendant has sought a federal forum would be anomalous at best.
483
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