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budge on penalties.
• A citizen's group then gathered signatures to put the issue to a statewide vote in June. The state Supreme Court refused to block that election when asked to rule on whether the law is constitutional.
• Legal bills obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press show the legal fight over the nickname vote has cost taxpayers more than $46,000 in lawyers' fees.
• "I still think there are some more peaks and valleys ahead between the ballot measures and everything that is going

on," Soderstrom said. "The people get to decide, and that's the beauty of this whole thing."
• In his ruling on the Spirit Lake and Standing Rock committee's lawsuit, Erickson noted the NCAA is a private association free to govern its members as it sees fit. Many of the committee's arguments, he said, were "entirely without merit, and the ones that could potentially have been meritorious could only have properly been brought by UND."
• Even if the school brought action, Erickson said, it would be an iffy proposition.
• The Spirit Lake reservation is located entirely within the state of North Dakota, whereas the Standing Rock reservation straddles the border between North Dakota and South Dakota, with its tribal headquarters in Fort Yates, N.D. Some nickname supporters have argued Standing Rock's interest in the issue is tempered because many members live in South Dakota.
• Soderstrom acknowledged his group "hung our hats" on a 1969 pipe ceremony held on the UND campus when a delegation from Standing Rock and at least one

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