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Page Number: 15

12 

OKLAHOMA v. CASTRO-HUERTA 

Opinion of the Court 

To buttress his implicit intent argument, Castro-Huerta
seizes on the history of the General Crimes Act.  At the time 
of  the  Act’s  earliest  iterations  in  1817  and  1834,  Indian 
country  was separate from the States.  Therefore, at that 
time,  state  law  did  not  apply  in  Indian  country—in  the 
same way that New York law would not ordinarily have ap-
plied in New Jersey.  But territorial separation—not juris-
dictional preemption by the General Crimes Act—was the 
reason that state authority did not extend to Indian country 
at that time. 

Because Congress operated under a different territorial
paradigm in 1817 and 1834, it had no reason at that time 
to consider whether to preempt preexisting or lawfully as-
sumed state criminal authority in Indian country.  For pre-
sent purposes, the fundamental point is that the text of the
General Crimes Act does not preempt state law.  And this 
Court  does  not  “rewrite  a  constitutionally  valid  statutory
text under the banner of speculation about what Congress
might have done had it faced a question that . . . it never 
faced.”  Henson, 582 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9).  The history
of  territorial  separation  during  the  early  years  of  the  Re-
public is not a license or excuse to rewrite the text of the
General Crimes Act. 

As  noted  above,  the  Worcester-era  understanding  of  In-
dian  country  as  separate  from  the  State  was  abandoned 
later  in  the  1800s.    After  that  change,  Indian  country  in
each State became part of that State’s territory.  But Con-
gress did not alter the General Crimes Act to make federal 
criminal  jurisdiction  exclusive  in  Indian  country.    To  this 
day, the text of the General Crimes Act still does not make
federal jurisdiction exclusive or preempt state jurisdiction.
In  1882,  in  McBratney,  moreover,  this  Court  held  that 
States have jurisdiction to prosecute at least some crimes
committed in Indian country.  Since 1882, therefore, Con-
gress has been specifically aware that state criminal laws
apply  to  some  extent  in  Indian  country.    Yet  since  then,