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Page Number: 111

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

29 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

removal treaties); The Kansas Indians, 5 Wall. 737 (1867) 
(States cannot tax Indian lands)).  It does not follow from 
those  cases  that  the  Federal  Government  has  any  addi-
tional  authority  with  regard  to  Indians—much  less  a 
sweeping, unbounded authority over all matters relating to 
Indians.  Cf. Worcester, 6 Pet., at 547 (suggesting that tribes 
had  long  been  left  to  regulate  their  internal  affairs).    At 
each step, Kagama thus lacked any constitutional basis.

Nonetheless,  in  the  years  after  Kagama,  this  Court 
started referring to a “plenary power” or “plenary author-
ity” that Congress possessed over Indian tribes, as well as
a trust relationship with the Indians.  See, e.g., Stephens v. 
Cherokee  Nation,  174  U. S.  445,  478  (1899);  Lone  Wolf  v. 
Hitchcock, 187 U. S. 553, 565 (1903); Winton v. Amos, 255 
U. S. 373, 391 (1921).  And, in the decades since, this Court 
has increasingly gestured to such a plenary power, usually 
in  the  context  of  regulating  a  tribal  government  or  tribal 
lands,  while  conspicuously  failing  to  ground  the  power  in
any constitutional text and cautioning that the power is not 
absolute.  See, e.g., ante, at 13 (noting this problem); United 
States v. Alcea Band of Tillamooks, 329 U. S. 40, 54 (1946) 
(opinion of Vinson, C. J.); Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 
436 U. S. 49, 56–57 (1978).

The majority’s opinion today continues in that vein—only 
confirming  its  lack  of  any  constitutional  basis.    Like  so 
many  cases  before  it,  the  majority’s  opinion  lurches  from
one  constitutional  hook  to  another,  not  quite  hanging  the
idea of a plenary power on any of them, while insisting that 
the  plenary  power  is  not  absolute.    See  ante,  at  10–13. 
While I empathize with the majority regarding the confu-
sion that Kagama and its progeny have engendered, I can-
not reflexively reaffirm a power that remains in search of a 
constitutional basis.  And, while the majority points to a few 
actual  constitutional  provisions,  like  the  Commerce  and 
Treaty  Clauses,  those  provisions  cannot  bear  the  weight 
that our cases have placed upon them.