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18 

YSLETA DEL SUR PUEBLO v. TEXAS 

Opinion of the Court 

banned only those games forbidden in Texas.  But this de-
velopment is hardly surprising either.  The Tribe adopted 
its resolution in 1986 in connection with negotiations over 
a  bill  that  eventually  died  in  the  Senate.  See  Brief  for 
United States as Amicus Curiae 3–4, 30.  As talks continued 
the  following  year,  this  Court  issued  Cabazon.  And  after 
that, as we have seen, Tribes across the country saw their 
negotiating  “position  strengthened.”    Wood  1027,  and  n. 
353; see also Part I–B, supra.  The dissent omits these es-
sential details from its account of how the Restoration Act 
became law.  See post, at 3.  That omission leads the dissent 
to overlook one plausible explanation for why the Tribe got 
the  deal  it  did.    It  may  be  that,  thanks  to  Cabazon,  the 
Tribe’s representatives were able to persuade Congress to 
impose a less draconian ban—one that paralleled the terms
this  Court  in  Cabazon  found  applicable  to  many  other 
Tribes under Public Law 280.  Surely, too, as we have seen, 
if  Congress  had  intended  a  more  complete  federal  ban,  it 
could  have  easily  said  so.    Not  by  obliquely  referencing  a
tribal resolution, but by saying so clearly, just as it did for
both the Wampanoag and Catawba Tribes.  See Part II–B, 
supra. 
4

B 

In the end, Texas retreats to the usual redoubt of failing 
statutory interpretation arguments:  an unadorned appeal
to public policy.  Echoing arguments voiced by the Cabazon 

—————— 

4 The dissent tries to reshape the tribal resolution to its liking by dis-
tilling it down to a “single ‘request[ ]’ ” to “ban on the reservation all gam-
ing as defined by Texas.”  Post, at 3, 9.  And it chides the Court for con-
sulting  “excerpts  from  the  Resolution’s  preamble”  that  complicate  the 
dissent’s narrative.  Post, at 10.  But the entire document is an expression 
of the Tribe’s views.  If we are to rely on the resolution as a snapshot of 
the  Tribe’s  position,  it  makes  little  sense  to  ignore  much  of  it.    In  any  
event, courts regularly consult preambles and recitals even in statutes 
and contracts.  See A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law 217–220 (2012).