Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-376_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 25.0

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

17 

Opinion of the Court 

Fifth Circuit did not uphold ICWA on that rationale.

Presumably recognizing these obstacles, petitioners turn
to criticizing our precedent as inconsistent with the Consti-
tution’s  original  meaning.    Yet  here  too,  they  offer  no  ac-
count of how their argument fits within the landscape of our 
case law.  For instance, they neither ask us to overrule the
precedent they criticize nor try to reconcile their approach 
with  it.  They  are  also  silent  about  the  potential  conse-
quences of their position.  Would it undermine established 
cases and statutes?  If so, which ones?  Petitioners do not 
say.

We recognize that our case law puts petitioners in a diffi-
cult spot.  We have often sustained Indian legislation with-
out specifying the source of Congress’s power, and we have
insisted  that  Congress’s  power  has  limits  without  saying 
what they are.  Yet petitioners’ strategy for dealing with the 
confusion is not to offer a theory for rationalizing this body
of law—that would at least give us something to work with.4 
Instead,  they  frame  their  arguments  as  if  the  slate  were
clean.  More than two centuries in, it is anything but.

If there are arguments that ICWA exceeds Congress’s au-
thority  as  our  precedent  stands  today,  petitioners  do  not
make them.  We therefore decline to disturb the Fifth Cir-
cuit’s conclusion that ICWA is consistent with Article I. 

—————— 

4 Texas  floated  a  theory  for  the  first  time  at  oral  argument.    It  said 
that, taken together, our plenary power cases fall into three buckets: (1)
those allowing Congress to legislate pursuant to an enumerated power, 
such as the Indian Commerce Clause or the Treaty Clause; (2) those al-
lowing  Congress  to  regulate  the  tribes  as  government  entities;  and  (3) 
those  allowing  Congress  to  enact  legislation  that  applies  to  federal  or 
tribal land.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 55.  According to Texas, ICWA is unconsti-
tutional because it does not fall within any of these categories.  We have 
never broken down our cases this way.  But even if Texas’s theory is de-
scriptively  accurate,  Texas  offers  no  explanation  for  why  Congress’s 
power is limited to these categories.