Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-429_8o6a.pdf
Page Number: 40

12 

OKLAHOMA v. CASTRO-HUERTA 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

that  it  lacks  legal  authority  to  try  cases  of  this  sort;  and
ignore  fundamental  principles  of  tribal  sovereignty,  a 
treaty, the Oklahoma Enabling Act, its own state constitu-
tion, and Public Law 280.  Oklahoma must pursue a propo-
sition  so  novel  and  so  unlikely  that  in  over  two  centuries 
not  a  single  State  has  successfully  attempted  it  in  this 
Court. 
Incredibly,  too,  the  defense  of  tribal  interests
against the State’s gambit falls to a non-Indian criminal de-
fendant.  The real party in interest here isn’t Mr. Castro-
Huerta but the Cherokee, a Tribe of 400,000 members with 
its own government.  Yet the Cherokee have no voice as par-
ties  in  these  proceedings;  they  and  other  Tribes  are  rele-
gated to the filing of amicus briefs. 

II 
A 
Today  the  Court  rules  for  Oklahoma.  In  doing  so,  the 
Court announces that, when it comes to crimes by non-In-
dians  against  tribal  members  within  tribal  reservations,
Oklahoma may “exercise jurisdiction.”  Ante, at 4.  But this 
declaration comes as if by oracle, without any sense of the 
history recounted above and unattached to any colorable le-
gal  authority.  Truly,  a  more  ahistorical  and  mistaken 
statement of Indian law would be hard to fathom. 

The source of the Court’s error is foundational.  Through
most of its opinion, the Court proceeds on the premise that 
Oklahoma  possesses  “inherent”  sovereign  power  to  prose-
cute  crimes  on  tribal  reservations  until  and  unless  Con-
gress “preempt[s]” that authority.  Ante, at 5–18.  The Court 
emphasizes that States normally wield broad police powers
within  their  borders  absent  some  preemptive  federal  law.
See ante, at 4–6; see also Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren, 
587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (lead opinion) (slip op., at 12). 

But the effort to wedge Tribes into that paradigm is a cat-
egory  error.  Tribes  are  not  private  organizations  within