Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-493_jgko.pdf
Page Number: 24.0

20 

YSLETA DEL SUR PUEBLO v. TEXAS 

Opinion of the Court 

concedes that another Tribe within its borders—the Kicka-
poo Traditional Tribe of Texas—is already subject to IGRA 
and offers class II games.  See Tr. of Oral Arg. 91; see also 
Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 32.  Why some-
thing like the Cabazon test can work for one Tribe in Texas 
but not another is not exactly obvious. 

For that matter, Texas’s alternative interpretation poses 
its own “workability” challenges.  Under the State’s read-
ing, subsection (c) does not just charge federal courts with
enforcing on tribal lands a federal law banning gaming ac-
tivities  also  banned  by  state  law.  It  also  charges  federal
courts with enforcing the minutiae of state gaming regula-
tions  governing  the  conduct  of  permissible  games—a  role 
usually  played  by  state  gaming  commissions  or  the  Na-
tional  Indian  Gaming  Commission.    It’s  a  highly  unusual 
role for federal courts to assume.  But on Texas’s view, it’s 
a  role  federal  courts  must  assume,  as  indeed  they  have 
sought to do since Ysleta I.  And far from yielding an easily
administrable regime, by almost anyone’s account that pro-
ject has engendered a quarter century of confusion and dis-
pute.  See Part I–C, supra. 

* 
Texas contends that Congress in the Restoration Act has
allowed all of its state gaming laws to act as surrogate fed-
eral law on tribal lands.  The Fifth Circuit took the same 
view in Ysleta I and in the proceedings below.  That under-
standing of the law is mistaken.  The Restoration Act bans 
as a matter of federal law on tribal lands only those gaming
activities also banned in Texas.  To allow the Fifth Circuit 
to revise its precedent and reconsider this case in the cor-
rect light, its judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded 
for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.  

So ordered.