Hobart urges caution with Oneida receipts

This story has been updated to reflect comment received Wednesday from the Oneida Tribe.

HOBART - In a message to residents, village leaders are warning people to be careful in handling credit card receipts from businesses run by the Oneida Tribe of Indians, after a lawsuit failed to prevent the tribe from including certain personal information on the documents.

"We are informing residents to be cautious in disposing of purchase receipts from tribal locations," the village wrote on its website Monday.

The message was intended as a public-service announcement that credit card-holders who used Oneida businesses were at greater risk of identity theft because of what Oneida businesses display on their receipts, Village President Rich Heidel said. It cites a recent court case in which the tribe was sued — unsuccessfully — for continuing to include expiration dates and more than five digits of shoppers' credit card numbers on transactions.

The tribe, however, says the item on the village website is not about consumer protection.

"It's a very inflammatory message and it's aimed at harming our businesses, not protecting the consumers," Oneida spokeswoman Bobbi Webster said. "It's ridiculous that Hobart would … focus only on the Oneida Nation's businesses. Hobart should advise consumers to be cautious with all retail transactions, not just those involving Oneida businesses."

Receipts from the tribe's businesses display eight digits of a customer's credit card number, Webster said in an email Wednesday.

At issue is how the two sides interpret the portion of the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act that prohibits merchants from including credit card expiration dates and full credit card numbers on receipts. A customer of an Oneida business, Jeremy Meyers, filed a 2014 class-action suit against the Oneidas after he saw more than five digits of his card number on receipts from the Oneida Travel Center and the Oneida One Stop. The suit claimed the tribe had been violating the act since 2008.

Wisconsin-based U.S. District Judge William Griesbach ruled the tribe was immune from the lawsuit because FCRA does not apply to Indian tribes under an exception called "sovereign immunity." In an 18-page decision issued last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling.

Heidel said a more common-sense solution could have kept the case out of court.

"If I were the tribal business-owner or retail operator," he said, "I would've given the customer a $50 gift certificate and changed my business practices."

While the legal aspects of the credit-card flap have been resolved, another dispute between the village and the tribe continues. The Oneidas are challenging a citation the village issued to the tribe for not obtaining a special-event permit for the annual Big Apple Fest in September, saying the village does not have a legal right to require the tribe to have a permit.

dschneid@greenbaypressgazette.com and follow him on Twitter @PGDougSchneider