Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-429_8o6a.pdf
Page Number: 50.0

22 

OKLAHOMA v. CASTRO-HUERTA 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

Arizona  Enabling  Act—enacted  close  in  time  to  its  Okla-
homa counterpart—as reinforcing the traditional rule “that
the States lac[k] jurisdiction” on tribal lands over crimes by
or  against  Native  Americans.    McClanahan,  411  U. S.,  at 
175;  see  also  Warren  Trading  Post  Co.  v.  Arizona  Tax 
Comm’n, 380 U. S. 685, 687, n. 3 (1965).5 

4 

The few occasions on which Congress has even arguably 
authorized  the  application  of  state  criminal  law  on  tribal 
reservations still do not come anywhere near granting Ok-
lahoma the power it seeks.  In the late 1800s, this Court in 
—————— 

5 In  places,  the  Court  seems  to  suggest  that  the  Oklahoma  Enabling
Act endowed the State with “inherent” jurisdiction to try any crime com-
mitted within its borders.  See ante, at 22–23.  But in the end the Court 
abandons  any  suggestion  that  with  statehood  Oklahoma  gained  an  in-
herent right to try cases involving tribal members within tribal bounds.
See Part III–A, infra.  So, once more, the Court’s discussion of the Okla-
homa Enabling Act turns out to be dicta future litigants are free to cor-
rect.  Much correction is warranted.  Not only does the Court fail to quote, 
let alone offer any analysis of, the relevant statutory text.  Its suggestion 
that the Oklahoma Enabling Act granted the State criminal jurisdiction
over tribal lands would require us to suppose that Congress abrogated
two treaties with the Cherokee without ever saying so—an interpreta-
tion that would grossly defy our Nation’s promises and this Court’s obli-
gation to read congressional work as a harmonious whole.  Reading the
Oklahoma  Enabling  Act  in  line  with  the  Court’s  ill-considered  dicta 
would also defy this Court’s longstanding precedents in Tiger, Ramsey, 
and McClanahan.  Of course, the Court tries to invoke McBratney and 
Draper as contrary authority.  But as we will see in a moment, both cases 
carefully reiterated the rule that statehood does not imply the right to
try crimes on tribal lands by or against tribal members.  The Court also 
cites Organized Village of Kake v. Egan, 369 U. S. 60 (1962).  But that 
case involved Alaska’s Anti-Fish-Trap Conservation Law, not the Okla-
homa  Enabling  Act.    Admittedly,  Egan  quotes  comments  from  a  1954 
legislative committee hearing about the Alaska Enabling Act in which a
few participants also happened to express views on the meaning of the 
Oklahoma Enabling Act, passed almost 50 years earlier.  See id., at 71. 
But surely this Court cannot think a few stray post-enactment legislative
comments, “unmoored from any statutory text,” ante, at 11, control over 
the statutory terms or our more specific precedents.