Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf
Page Number: 43.0

40 

MCGIRT v. OKLAHOMA 

Opinion of the Court 

utes or regulations to rely on definitions found in the crim-
inal law.  Of course, many federal civil laws and regulations
do currently borrow from §1151 when defining the scope of 
Indian country.  But it is far from obvious why this collat-
eral drafting choice should be allowed to skew our interpre-
tation of the MCA, or deny its promised benefits of a federal 
criminal forum to tribal members. 

It isn’t even clear what the real upshot of this borrowing
into civil law may be.  Oklahoma reports that recognizing
the existence of the Creek Reservation for purposes of the 
MCA might potentially trigger a variety of federal civil stat-
utes and rules, including ones making the region eligible for 
assistance  with  homeland  security,  6  U. S. C.  §§601,  606, 
historical  preservation,  54  U. S. C.  §302704,  schools,  20
U. S. C. §1443, highways, 23 U. S. C. §120, roads, §202, pri-
mary care clinics, 25 U. S. C. §1616e–1, housing assistance, 
§4131, nutritional programs, 7 U. S. C. §§2012, 2013, disa-
bility programs, 20 U. S. C. §1411, and more.  But what are 
we to make of this?  Some may find developments like these
unwelcome, but from what we are told others may celebrate 
them. 

The dissent isn’t so sanguine—it assures us, without fur-
ther elaboration, that the consequences will be “drastic pre-
cisely because they depart from . . . more than a century [of] 
settled understanding.”  Post, at 37.  The prediction is a fa-
miliar one.  Thirty years ago the Solicitor General warned 
that  “[l]aw  enforcement  would  be  rendered  very  difficult”
and there would be “grave uncertainty regarding the appli-
cation” of state law if courts departed from decades of “long-
held understanding” and recognized that the federal MCA 
applies  to  restricted  allotments  in  Oklahoma.    Brief  for 
United  States  as  Amicus  Curiae  in  Oklahoma  v.  Brooks, 
O.T.  1988,  No.  88–1147,  pp. 2,  9,  18,  19.    Yet,  during  the 
intervening decades none of these predictions panned out,
and that fact stands as a note of caution against too readily 
crediting identical warnings today.