Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-543_3e04.pdf
Page Number: 36

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

5 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

cebook, Inc., 592 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7); Jama v. Immi-
gration and Customs Enforcement, 543 U. S. 335, 344, n. 4 
(2005). 
  Exempting  ANCs  from  the  recognition  clause  would  be 
curious for at least two further reasons.  First, the reference 
to ANCs comes after the word “including.”  No one disputes 
that  the  recognition  clause  modifies  “any  Indian  tribe, 
band, nation, or other organized group or community.”  So 
if  the  ANCs  are  included  within  these  previously  listed 
nouns—as the statute says they are—it’s hard to see how 
they might nonetheless evade the recognition clause.  Sec-
ond,  in  the  proceedings  below  it  was  undisputed  that  the 
recognition  clause  modifies  the  term  “Alaska  Native  vil-
lage[s],” even as the ANCs argued that the clause does not 
modify the term “Alaska Native . . . regional or village cor-
poration.”  Confederated Tribes of Chehalis Reservation v. 
Mnuchin, 976 F. 3d 15, 23 (CADC 2020); Brief for Federal 
Petitioner 46.  But to believe that, one would have to sup-
pose the recognition clause skips over only half its nearest 
antecedent.  How the clause might do that mystifies.  See 
Facebook, 592 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6) (“It would be odd 
to apply the modifier . . . to only a portion of this cohesive 
preceding clause”). 
  At least initially, the Court accepts the obvious and con-
cedes that the recognition clause modifies everything in the 
list that precedes it.  Ante, at 8.  But this leaves the Court 
in a bind.  If the recognition clause applies to ANCs, then 
ANCs must be “recognized” in order to receive funds.  And 
“recognition”  is  a  formal  concept  in  Indian  law:    “Federal 
acknowledgement or recognition of an Indian group’s legal 
status  as  a  tribe  is  a  formal  political  act  confirming  the 
tribe’s existence as a distinct political society, and institu-
tionalizing the government-to-government relationship be-
tween the tribe and the federal government.”  1 F. Cohen, 
Handbook of Federal Indian Law §3.02[3], pp. 133–134 (N. 
Newton ed. 2012); see also id., §3.02[2], at 132–133.  No one