Absarokee
The U.S. Supreme Court had a second occasion to address issues with the Montana coal severance tax in 1998. In 1904, the Crow Nation ceded part of its tribal reservation back to the government of the United States. The federal government continued to hold the mineral rights under these lands in trust for the tribe. Montana's coal severance tax applied to coal mined on both the ceded federal land as well as land beneath the Crow Nation. The Crow Nation sued, claiming that the Montana tax impinged on their tribal sovereignty and was pre-empted by federal law. In the landmark Indian law case, "Montana v. Crow Tribe of Indians," the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed on both counts, reversing the previous judgments of the Ninth Circuit.