A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that has the potential to set a nationwide precedent concerning the scope of tribal immunity for Native American tribes has an unlikely connection to Clinton.

On April 25, the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that a Native American tribe’s sovereign immunity to lawsuits does not extend to preventing a tribal employee from being sued as an individual instead of as an employee of the tribe. The plaintiffs, Brian and Michelle Lewis, were represented by James Harrington, an associate at Polito and Associates Law Firm LLC, who grew up in Clinton. Harrington recounted how when he was younger, at night he would sneak downstairs to his grandfather’s in-law apartment where they would watch Perry Mason together.

“From a very early age I was very interested in the law,” Harrington said. He attended The Morgan School, graduating in 1998. He then graduated from Boston College and Western New England School of Law.

He said his “first emotion was surprise” when he found out he was going to be working on a case that was going to be heard before the Supreme Court.

The court heard the arguments for the case on Jan. 9. Harrington called the experience of being in the Supreme Court “surreal”, especially being just feet away from the “iconic justices” whose cases and decisions he had spent years reading and learning about in law school and applying in work. Due to the fact that photos and videos are not allowed inside the court room, Harrington also was impressed with his rare opportunity to see the court in action. Typically, one of the parameters the Supreme Court uses when deciding which cases to hear is if the case could be used to set precedent. This aspect applied to Harrington’s case because it “affects every tribe in the country,” he said.

“The employee, not the tribe, is the real party in interest and the tribe’s sovereign immunity is not implicated,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in delivering the court’s opinion.

Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer also joined Justice Sotomayor’s opinion. Justices Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed concurring opinions. Justice Neil Gorsuch didn’t rule on the case.

The trail to the Supreme Court began on an October night almost six years ago.

In October 2011, Pennsylvania natives Brian and Michelle Lewis were injured when they were rear-ended on I-95 in Norwalk by a limousine driven by William Clarke, an employee of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority. In a case originally filed in New London Superior Court in 2013, Lewis V. Clarke, the Lewises’ claimed that Clarke’s negligent driving led to the accident. Harrington, part of a two-person law firm that had experience dealing with the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribal courts, represented the Lewises.

The Superior Court ruled in favor of the Lewises, but Clarke appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2015. Clarke’s attorneys argued that because he was working for the casino, the tribe’s sovereign immunity meant the state didn’t have jurisdiction over the case and it should be dismissed.

The tribe wanted the Gaming Disputes Court to hear the case. However, in Gaming Dispute Court, punitive damages are not allowed and medical bill payments are capped, among other issues, so the Lewises opted to pursue their case in state court. Additionally, Harrington argued that since the Lewises had never been to Mohegan Sun, it was unfair for them to have to go before the tribe’s court.

The Connecticut Supreme Court sided with Clarke in March 2016. Harrington then appealed to the United States Supreme Court in summer 2016.

According to Harrington, the Supreme Court choses to hear around one percent of the nearly 6,000 cases that are petitioned to it. When the court announced in September that his case was one of the cases to heard, Harrington said he was “certainly very surprised and happy.”

While Harrington said the court had heard cases pertaining to the sovereignty of the tribes before, it hadn’t had a case that limited the scope of that immunity before. As Harrington pointed out, Connecticut residents tend to think of the Pequot and Mohegan tribes when they think of native American sovereignty, but as a footnote in the Supreme Court’s decision says, “there are 567 federally recognized Indian and Alaska Native entities.”

Now that the court ruled that sovereign immunity doesn’t cover people sued as individuals, the case will return to New London Superior Court.