On November 19, 2025, the Klamath Tribes filed a motion to amend their petition in the Circuit Court of Klamath County. The amended petition seeks to reverse recent illegal orders that replaced a long-time administrative law judge in the Klamath Basin Adjudication (KBA) on the heels of a secret deal cut between the Oregon State Office of Administrative Hearings and certain water users in the Upper Klamath Basin.
In August 2025, Chief Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey Rhoades removed long-time presiding Administrative Law Judge Joe Allen from continuing to handle the KBA cases. The removal disregarded two administrative decisions in the past year (in November 2024 and March 2025) that had specifically rejected challenges to Judge Allen from a water users group called the Upper Basin Irrigators and concluded that Judge Allen should continue to preside over the KBA cases. Rhoades’ extraordinary turnaround came after the Upper Basin Irrigators filed a lawsuit in Marion County Circuit Court against Rhoades and the Office of Administrative Hearings demanding that the Marion County Court remove Judge Allen from the KBA cases [Upper Basin Irrigators et al v. Jeffrey R. Rhoades & Oregon Office of Administrative Hearings, Case No. 25CV20984]. Rather than brief the case and defend the integrity of the administrative proceedings, however, the Office of Administrative Hearings reached a secret agreement with the Upper Basin Irrigators to remove Judge Allen from the KBA cases. This backroom deal was done without the participation or knowledge of any other KBA parties, including the Klamath Tribes and the United States.
“It was unconscionable for Judge Rhoades to remove Judge Allen from presiding over the long-running Klamath Basin Adjudication cases on the basis of a secret agreement reached in a separate case. These orders were done in violation of Oregon law, judicial ethics, and the Klamath Tribes’ due process rights,” said Klamath Tribes Chairman William E. Ray. “Any agreement reached in the Marion County Circuit Court case should have been disclosed to the parties in the Klamath Basin Adjudication, including the Tribes and United States, before Chief ALJ Rhoades acted.” Oregon law and administrative rules require administrative law judges to disclose any separate communications they have with parties to a case with all of the parties in that case.
The recent orders raise serious questions about whether the Office of Administrative Hearings is a fair forum for determining the Tribes’ federal reserved water rights. Under the federal McCarran Amendment, Tribal reserved water rights may be determined in an “adequate” state court proceeding. The secret dealings among the Office of Administrative Hearings, Chief Administrative Law Judge Rhoades, and the Upper Basin Irrigators raise significant concerns about the adequacy of Oregon courts to provide the Tribes with the fair forum they are entitled to have. This is especially true given the Upper Basin Irrigators’ desperate efforts to remove Judge Allen. With Allen’s extensive experience presiding over KBA and federal water rights issues, the challenges are best understood as an effort to subvert his sound legal rulings with the hope to install someone more favorable to UBI.
The KBA is a several-decades-old lawsuit pending in the Circuit Court of Klamath County. It is quantifying the federal reserved water rights of the Klamath Tribes in the Klamath River Basin. The KBA involves administrative hearings conducted by the Office of Administrative Hearings, which made initial determinations on the Tribes’ water rights claims. Extensive proceedings were conducted at the Office from 2006 to 2012, and the Klamath County Circuit Court recently returned cases there for additional proceedings.
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