day. Judge Kennedy signed an additional agreed upon Order between the parties requiring additional time for absentee ballots for Freedmen descendants and five days of walk-in voting for all Cherokee. In October 2011, Bill John Baker was inaugurated as Principal Chief after the Cherokee Supreme Court rejected an appeal of the election results by former chief Chad Smith. Motions, developments and hearings 2012 to 2014 The Cherokee Nation amended their complaint in May 2012 and as a response, on July 2, 2012, the US Department of the Interior filed a counter lawsuit against the Cherokee Nation in U.S. District Court in Tulsa, Oklahoma seeking to stop the denial of tribal citizenship and other rights to the Freedmen. The Freedmen filed counterclaims against certain Cherokee Nation Officers and the Cherokee Nation with cross-claims against the Federal Defendants. On October 18, 2012, the Vann case was heard by the United States District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. On December 14, 2012, the court reversed the initial finding of the lower court, stating "The Ex parte Young doctrine allows suits for declaratory and injunctive relief against government officials in their official capacities – notwithstanding the sovereign immunity possessed by the government itself. The Ex parte Young doctrine applies to Indian tribes as well". It remanded the case back to the lower courts. In March, 2013 a request by the tribe to reconsider the decision was denied. On September 13, 2013, the parties to Vann and Nash, including the Cherokee, jointly petitioned the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to resolve by summary judgment the question of whether the Freedmen are entitled to equal citizenship in the Cherokee Nation under the Treaty of 1866. A hearing was scheduled for late April, 2014 but occurred on May 5, 2014. After reviewing the motion for summary judgment submitted in January by the Department of the Interior, Judge Thomas F. Hogan stated that "he was skeptical the treaty allows the tribe to change its constitution to require Indian blood for CN [Cherokee Nation] citizenship." The hearing was the first during the 11-year controversy to look at the merits, rather than procedural issues. Reinstatement of citizenship On August 30, 2017, the U.S. District Court ruled in favor of the Freedmen descendants and the U.S. Department of the Interior in Cherokee Nation v. Raymond Nash et al. and Marilyn Vann et al.. The