Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-493_jgko.pdf
Page Number: 37

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

13 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

Garner,  Reading  Law  174  (2012)  (no  provision  “should 
needlessly be given an interpretation that causes it to du-
plicate another provision or to have no consequence” (bold-
face deleted)).4 

The Tribe’s preferred interpretation is especially doubtful
given the history of the Restoration Act.  The key roadblock 
to  the  Tribe  obtaining  federal  trust  status  was  a  concern 
that it would permit gambling.  The Tribe obtained federal 
trust status only after striking a deal on this issue.  See Ys-
leta del Sur Pueblo, 220 F. Supp. 2d, at 677.  It would make 
little  sense  for  Congress  to  have  enacted  §107(a)’s  limita-
tions on gaming merely to duplicate the rules already set
forth in §105(f ).  And it would make even less sense for Con-
gress to have done so while simultaneously indicating that 
it was enacting the gaming prohibition “in accordance with
the tribe’s request,” §107(a), 101 Stat. 668–669, that it ban
on tribal lands “all gaming, gambling, lottery, or bingo, as
defined by the laws and administrative regulations of the 
State  of  Texas”—full  stop,  App.  to  Pet.  for  Cert.  123  (em-
phasis added).

What’s  more,  the  Tribe’s  interpretation  of  §107—em-
braced by the Court today—leads to a bizarre result: Viola-
tions of Texas’s criminal gaming prohibitions receive more 
lenient treatment than all other violations of Texas’s crim-
inal  laws.  Under  §105(f ),  Texas  may  directly  enforce  in
state  court  all  of  its  laws  that  are  “criminal/prohibitory.”
But under §107(c), Texas may enforce its gaming laws only
through federal-court injunctions.  This diminished enforce-
ment  authority  would  make  sense  if  the  full  breadth  of 

—————— 

4 In response, the Court focuses on the different treatment of Texas’s 
gaming laws under §§107(b) and (c).  See ante, at 12, n. 1.  But the Court 
does not dispute that under its reading of the Restoration Act, §107(a) 
readopted the substantive Cabazon Band standard already required by 
§105(f ),  even  though  §105(f )  comes  just  a  few  sentences  earlier  in  the 
statute  and  uses  distinct  language  not  present  in  §107(a)  to  expressly
adopt the Public Law 280 framework.