Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-493_jgko.pdf
Page Number: 19.0

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

15 

Opinion of the Court 

too.  Yet for this Tribe Congress did something different.  It 
did not subject the Tribe to all Texas laws that “prohibit or
regulate” gaming.  It did not subject the Tribe to all laws 
that  “govern  the  regulation  of  gambling.”  Instead,  Con-
gress  banned  on  tribal  lands  only  those  gaming  activities
“prohibited” by Texas, and it did not provide for state “reg-
ulatory jurisdiction” over tribal gaming.2 

None of this is to say that the Tribe may offer any gaming
activity on whatever terms it wishes.  It is only to say that
the Fifth Circuit and Texas have erred in their understand-
ing of the Restoration Act.  Under that law’s terms, if a gam-
ing activity is prohibited by Texas law it is also prohibited 
on tribal land as a matter of federal law.  Other gaming ac-
tivities  are  subject  to  tribal  regulation  and  must  conform
with the terms and conditions set forth in federal law, in-
cluding  IGRA  to  the  extent  it  is  applicable.  See  Brief  for 
United States as Amicus Curiae 31–33.3 

III 
A 
By this point, only two arguments remain for us to con-
sider.  In the first, Texas and the dissent focus heavily on 

—————— 

2 The  dissent  speculates  about  ways  Congress  could  have  even  more 
clearly communicated its intention to ban only those games prohibited 
by Texas.  See post, at 8–9.  But rather than compare the Restoration Act
to hypothetical language Congress could have used, it seems more appro-
priate to compare the Act’s terms to language Congress did use in closely 
related statutes addressing precisely the same subject, including in one
passed the very same day as this Act.  The dissent cannot and does not 
deny  that  Congress  could  have  employed  the  language  it  used  in  the 
Wampanoag and Catawba statutes.  That Congress took a different ap-
proach strongly suggests it had in mind a different set of rules for this 
Tribe. 

3 In reaching this conclusion, we need not rely on the rule—long estab-
lished by our precedents—that “statutes are to be construed liberally in 
favor of the Indians, with ambiguous provisions interpreted to their ben-
efit.”  Montana v. Blackfeet Tribe, 471 U. S. 759, 766 (1985).  On our view, 
Texas’s interpretation fails even without recourse to that rule.