Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-429_8o6a.pdf
Page Number: 63

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

35 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

Tribal  Nations  began  seeking  retrocession  and  repeal.” 
Brief for National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center et 
al. as Amici Curiae 12.  Recently, a bipartisan congressional
commission agreed that more state criminal jurisdiction in 
Indian country is often not a good policy choice.  See Indian 
Law and Order Commission, A Roadmap for Making Native
America Safer: Report to the President and Congress of the
United States xi, xiv, 11–15 (Nov. 2013).  Still, none of this 
finds its way into the Court’s cost-benefit analysis. 

2 
Instead,  the  Court  marches  on.  The  second  “factor”  it 
weighs  in  its  “balance”—and  the  only  history  it  seems 
interested  in  consulting—concerns  Oklahoma’s  account  of 
its experiences in the last two years since McGirt.  Adopting
the State’s representations wholesale, the Court says that 
decision  has  posed  Oklahoma  with 
law-and-order 
“challenge[s].”  Ante, at 4.  To support its thesis, the Court
cites the State’s unsubstantiated “estimat[e]” that McGirt 
has  forced  it  to  “transfer  prosecutorial  responsibility  for 
more  than  18,000  cases  per  year  to”  federal  and  tribal
authorities.  Ibid.  Apparently on the belief that the transfer 
of  cases  from  state  to  federal  prosecutors  equates  to  an
eruption  of  chaos  and  criminality,  the  Court  remarks 
casually that traditional limitations on state prosecutorial 
authority  on  tribal  lands  were  “insignificant  in  the  real
world” before McGirt.  Ante, at 16. 

But  what  does  this  prove?  Put  aside  for  the  moment 
questions about the accuracy of Oklahoma’s statistics and
what the number of cases transferred from state to federal 
prosecutors may or may not mean for law and order.  See 
Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  26  (questioning  whether  the  State’s 
“figures”  might  be  “grossly  exaggerated”).    Taking  the
Court’s account at face value, it might amount to a reason
for  Oklahoma  to  lobby  the  Cherokee  to  consent  to  state 
jurisdiction.  It might be a reason for the State to petition