WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide whether the Narragansett Indians should be permitted to shield some of their land from state and local laws.

The case concerns a bid to bring under federal and tribal authority a 31-acre parcel that the tribe bought in 1991 for development. The parcel is near the 1,800 acres in Charlestown that Congress granted to the Narragansetts in a landmark land-claims settlement law 30 years ago.

But the case could have big implications for Indian land disputes across the country. Sixteen states from New England to Alaska joined Rhode Island in appealing a decision by the federal appellate court in Boston that favored the Narragansetts.

Indian lands disputes have long involved constitutional tensions between the sovereignty of tribes and states. Since the advent of lucrative gambling businesses on tribal lands nationwide, the financial stakes have soared as well.

Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas has said the Narragansetts intend to complete an unfinished housing complex for the elderly on the parcel at issue, but has not ruled out building a casino on the land.

Thomas said yesterday that the high court’s review will give the tribe an opportunity to demonstrate that it never agreed to give up its rights to acquire land or to self government. “Our rights are clear. At the end of the day our rights should be upheld,” Thomas said.

Governor Carcieri issued a statement in which he pronounced himself “extremely gratified that the Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear our argument in this case of national importance.”

An independent observer, Carl Tobias, of the University of Richmond School of Law, said the Supreme Court review gives Rhode Island — and, by implication, other states — a chance to win what was lost in a key appeals court decision last year.

“The tribe will now have to defend in the Supreme Court a judgment that they won” in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July, he said. That 4-to-2 decision was “a solid victory for the tribe, which they could, of course, lose” now that the Supreme Court has consented to hear the appeal, Tobias said.

In their friend of the court brief filed in the Rhode Island case, the other states argued that the 1st Circuit “dismantled” longstanding limitations on the Interior Department’s power to take land into trust for Indian tribes. That weakens state authority “to exercise its police power to protect the public both on the trust land and in the surrounding communities,” the states argued.

The Interior Department is the federal cabinet agency that oversees Indian affairs. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is thus the respondent in the case brought by Carcieri, known as Carcieri v. Kempthorne.

Joseph S. Larisa Jr., a lawyer for the Town of Charlestown who has opposed the tribe for years in legal contests over the sovereignty question, said the issue fueling the interest of Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts in the case is casino gambling. The states oppose what they view as an attempted expansion of federal power to take land into trust for tribes, in order to exempt those lands from local and state gambling regulations.

But the legal issue applies equally to questions of zoning ordinances or other state and local law. For example, Larisa said, Utah officials have disputed a Utah tribe’s use of trust land to permit the construction and rental of billboards on a highway where they had been banned by state law.

On the local gambling question, “The paramount issue of state sovereignty is the potential that this could open the door to a casino, at least a crack, over the objections of Rhode Island voters,” Larisa said.

But U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement argued in his brief for the government that the 1st Circuit was correct in ruling that the Interior Department has clear authority to grant trust status to Indian lands, even when — as with the Narragansetts’ parcel — the land was not originally part of tribal lands.

In addition to the broad issue of federal trust powers, the case also focuses on a longstanding dispute between the State of Rhode Island and the Narrragansetts — the extent to which the tribe agreed to abide by state and local law when it agreed to the terms of the Rhode Island Indian Land Claims Settlement Act of 1978. The law secured the 1,800 acres of tribal land for the Narragansetts.

The current case hinges on whether the tribe’s 31-acre lot in Charlestown should be subject to Rhode Island law, including a prohibition on casino gambling, or whether the parcel should be governed by tribal and federal law.

The state has argued that federal law prevents the federal government from taking land into trust, or largely removing land from state and local control, for tribes recognized after the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, unless Congress specifically authorized it. The Narragansetts became a federally recognized tribe in 1983.

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch said in a statement that the case has national significance because “with the stroke of a pen” the Interior secretary “can unilaterally strip a state of its sovereign jurisdiction by taking land into trust — even where there are currently no federally recognized Indian tribes.”

Carcieri said yesterday’s action was “great news for the people of Rhode Island and an important step for every state facing similar issues. For too long, the legitimate concerns of states in the federal land-to-trust process have been ignored. It is simply not acceptable for any state to be stripped of its sovereignty over land within its borders by mid-level bureaucrats in Washington.”

“There is no language to abrogate our current or future rights,” Thomas said. He said he couldn’t predict how the court might rule. “As of late, I don’t exactly think they’re friendly to Indian tribes.”

The Supreme Court will hold oral arguments on the case during the term that begins in the fall.

Staff writer Katie Mulvaney contributed to this report.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com