Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf
Page Number: 66.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

21 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

the newly created U. S. District Courts of Oklahoma.  See 
§16, 34 Stat. 276.  Pending cases not involving federal law,
including  those  that  involved  Indians  on  Indian  land  and 
had  arisen  under  Arkansas  law,  were  transferred  to  the 
new Oklahoma state courts.  §§16, 17, 20, id., at 276–277. 
To dispel any potential confusion about the distribution of 
criminal cases, Congress amended the Enabling Act the fol-
lowing year, clarifying that all cases for crimes that would 
have  fallen  under  federal  jurisdiction  had  they  been  com-
mitted in a State would be transferred to the U. S. District 
Courts.  Act of Mar. 4, 1907, §1, id., at 1286–1287.  All other 
pending criminal cases would be “prosecuted to a final de-
termination  in  the  State  courts  of  Oklahoma.”   §3,  id.,  at 
1287.  As for civil cases, the new state courts were immedi-
ately  empowered  to  resolve  even  disputes  that  previously 
lay  at  the  core  of  tribal  self-governance.  E.g.,  Palmer  v. 
Cully, 52 Okla. 454, 463–469, 153 P. 154, 157–158 (1915) 
(per curiam) (marital dispute).4 

In  sum,  in  statute  after  statute,  Congress  made  abun-
dantly  clear  its  intent  to  disestablish  the  Creek  territory.
The  Court,  for  purposes  of  the  disestablishment  question
before us, defines the Creek territory as “lands that would
lie outside both the legal jurisdiction and geographic bound-
aries of any State” and on which a tribe was “assured a right 
to self-government.”  Ante, at 6.  That territory was elimi-
nated.  By establishing uniform laws for Indians and non- 

—————— 

4 The  Court,  citing  United  States  v.  Sandoval,  231  U. S.  28,  47–48 
(1913), argues that including a tribe within a new State is not necessarily
incompatible with the continuing existence of a reservation.  Ante, at 15– 
16, n. 6.  But the tribe in Sandoval, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, 
retained a rare communal title to their lands—which Congress explicitly 
extinguished here.   231  U. S.,  at  47.   More  fundamentally,  the  Court’s 
argument  suffers  from  the  same  flaw  that  runs  through  its  entire  ap-
proach, which maintains that each of Congress’s actions alone would not
be enough for disestablishment but never confronts the import of all of 
them.