Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf
Page Number: 6.0

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

3 

Opinion of the Court 

this condition because he committed his crimes on land re-
served for the Creek since the 19th century. 

The Creek  Nation has joined Mr. McGirt as amicus  cu-
riae.  Not because the Tribe is interested in shielding Mr. 
McGirt  from  responsibility  for  his  crimes.    Instead,  the 
Creek  Nation  participates  because  Mr.  McGirt’s  personal
interests wind up implicating the Tribe’s.  No one disputes 
that  Mr.  McGirt’s  crimes  were  committed  on  lands  de-
scribed as the Creek Reservation in an 1866 treaty and fed-
eral statute.  But, in seeking to defend the state-court judg-
ment below, Oklahoma has put aside whatever procedural
defenses  it  might  have  and  asked  us  to  confirm  that  the
land once given to the Creeks is no longer a reservation to-
day.

At another level, then, Mr. McGirt’s case winds up as a 
contest between State and Tribe.  The scope of their dispute
is limited; nothing we might say today could unsettle Okla-
homa’s authority to try non-Indians for crimes against non-
Indians  on  the  lands  in  question.   See  United  States  v. 
McBratney, 104 U. S. 621, 624 (1882).  Still, the stakes are 
not insignificant.  If Mr. McGirt and the Tribe are right, the 
State has no right to prosecute Indians for crimes commit-
ted  in  a  portion  of  Northeastern  Oklahoma  that  includes
most of the city of Tulsa.  Responsibility to try these matters
would fall instead to the federal government and Tribe. Re-
cently, the question has taken on more salience too.  While 
Oklahoma  state  courts  have  rejected  any  suggestion  that 
the lands in question remain a reservation, the Tenth Cir-
cuit has reached the opposite conclusion.  Murphy v. Royal, 
875 F. 3d 896, 907–909, 966 (2017).  We granted certiorari 
to settle the question.  589 U. S. ___ (2019). 

Start with what should be obvious: Congress established 
a reservation for the Creeks.  In a series of treaties, Con-

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