Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-429_8o6a.pdf
Page Number: 33.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

5 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

Georgia  took  the  same  view.  See  Letter  from  Georgia 
House  of  Representatives  to  Governor  Edward  Telfair
(June 10, 1790), in 3 Documentary History of the Ratifica-
tion  of  the  Constitution:  Delaware,  New  Jersey,  Georgia,
and Connecticut 178 (M. Jensen ed. 1978) (Microform Supp.
Doc. No. 50).

It was against this background that Chief Justice Mar-
shall faced Worcester.  After gold was discovered in Chero-
kee  territory  in  the  1820s,  Georgia’s  Legislature  enacted 
laws designed to “seize [the] whole Cherokee country, par-
cel it out among the neighboring counties of the state . . . 
abolish [the Tribe’s] institutions and its laws, and annihi-
late its political existence.”  Worcester, 6 Pet., at 542.  Like 
Oklahoma today, Georgia also purported to extend its crim-
inal laws to Cherokee lands.  See ibid.; see also S. Breyer,
The  Cherokee  Indians  and  the  Supreme  Court,  87  The 
Georgia Historical Q. 408, 416–418 (2003) (Breyer).  In re-
fusing  to  sanction  Georgia’s  power  grab,  this  Court  ex-
plained that the State’s “assertion of jurisdiction over the
Cherokee nation” was “void,” because under our Constitu-
tion  only  the  federal  government  possessed  the  power  to
manage relations with the Tribe.  Worcester, 6 Pet., at 542, 
561–562. 

B 

Two years later, and exercising its authority to regulate 
tribal affairs in the shadow of Worcester, Congress adopted 
the General Crimes Act of 1834 (GCA).  That law extended 
federal  criminal  jurisdiction  to  tribal  lands  for  certain 
crimes  and,  in  doing  so,  served  two  apparent  purposes.
First, as a “courtesy” to the Tribes, the law represented a
promise  by  the  federal  government  “to  punish  crimes  . . . 
committed  . . .  by  and  against  our  own  [non-Indian]  citi-
zens.” H. Rep. No. 474, 23d Cong., 1st Sess., 13 (1834) (H.
Rep.  No.  474).    That  jurisdictional  arrangement  was  also