Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-429_8o6a.pdf
Page Number: 59

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

31 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

already has. 

Bracker involved a relatively minor civil dispute.  Arizona 
sought to tax vehicles used by the White Mountain Apache 
Tribe  in  logging  operations  on  tribal  lands.  See  Bracker, 
448  U. S.,  at  138–140.  The  Tribe  opposed  the  effort,
pointing to a federal law that regulated tribal logging but
did not say anything about preempting the State’s vehicle 
tax.  See id., at 141, 145.  The Court began by recognizing 
that  the  usual  rules  of  preemption  are  not  “properly 
applied” to Tribes.  Id., at 143.  Instead, the Court started 
with the traditional “ ‘backdrop’ ”  presumption that States
lack  jurisdiction  in  Indian  country.    Ibid.  And  the  Court 
explained that any ambiguities about the scope of federal
law must be “construed generously” in favor of the Tribes 
as sovereigns.  Id., at 143–144.  With these rules in mind, 
the Court proceeded to turn back the State’s tax based on a
“particularized inquiry into the nature of the state, federal,
and tribal interests at stake.”  Id., at 145.  The Court judged
that “traditional notions of [tribal] sovereignty,” the federal 
government’s  “policy  of  promoting  tribal  self-sufficiency,”
and the rule requiring it to resolve “[a]mbiguities” in favor 
of the Tribe trumped any competing state interest.  Id., at 
143–144, 151. 

Nothing  in  any  of  this  gets  the  Court  close  to  where  it
If  Arizona  had  to  proceed  against  the
wishes  to  go. 
traditional  “backdrop”  rule  excluding  state  jurisdiction,
Oklahoma  must.  And  if  Arizona could  not  overcome  that 
backdrop  rule  because  it  could  not  point  to  clear  federal
statutory  language  authorizing  its  comparatively  minor
civil tax, it is unfathomable how Oklahoma might overcome 
that rule here.  The State has pointed—and can point—to
nothing  in  Congress’s  work  granting  it  the  power  to  try
crimes against tribal members on a tribal reservation.  In 
Bracker, the Court found it instructive that Congress had 
“comprehensive[ly]”  regulated  “the  harvesting  of  Indian
timber,” even if it had not spoken directly to the question of