Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf
Page Number: 44

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

41 

Opinion of the Court 

More importantly, dire warnings are just that, and not a
license for us to disregard the law.  By suggesting that our
interpretation  of  Acts  of  Congress  adopted  a  century  ago
should be inflected based on the costs of enforcing them to-
day, the dissent tips its hand.  Yet again, the point of look-
ing at subsequent developments seems not to be determin-
ing the meaning of the laws Congress wrote in 1901 or 1906,
but emphasizing the costs of taking them at their word.

Still,  we  do  not  disregard  the  dissent’s  concern  for  reli-
ance interests.  It only seems to us that the concern is mis-
placed.  Many other legal doctrines—procedural bars, res
judicata, statutes of repose, and laches, to name a few—are
designed to protect those who have reasonably labored un-
der a mistaken understanding of the law.  And it is precisely 
because those doctrines exist that we are “fre[e] to say what
we know to be true . . . today, while leaving questions about 
. . . reliance interest[s] for later proceedings crafted to ac-
count for them.”  Ramos, 590 U. S., at ___ (plurality opin-
ion) (slip op., at 24). 

In reaching our conclusion about what the law demands
of us today, we do not pretend to foretell the future and we
proceed  well  aware  of  the  potential  for  cost  and  conflict 
around jurisdictional boundaries, especially ones that have
gone unappreciated for so long.  But it is unclear why pes-
simism should rule the day.  With the passage of time, Ok-
lahoma and its Tribes have proven they can work success-
fully  together  as  partners.  Already,  the  State  has
negotiated  hundreds  of  intergovernmental  agreements
with  tribes,  including  many  with  the  Creek.    See  Okla. 
Stat., Tit. 74, §1221 (2019 Cum. Supp.); Oklahoma Secre-
tary  of  State,  Tribal  Compacts  and  Agreements,
www.sos.ok.gov/tribal.aspx.  These  agreements  relate  to
taxation,  law  enforcement,  vehicle  registration,  hunting 
and fishing, and countless other fine regulatory questions.
See Brief for Tom Cole et al. as Amici Curiae 13–19.  No one 
before us claims that the spirit of good faith, “comity and