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The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals found Wednesday that local ordinances, such as traffic laws, do not apply to Native Americans in large portions of the state of Oklahoma as a result of a 2020 Supreme Court decision.
The 10th Circuit’s ruling reversed a $150 speeding ticket that the City of Tulsa had issued in 2018 to Choctaw Nation member Justin Hooper, with the court noting that Tulsa lies within the historic boundaries of the Muscogee Nation and thus lacked jurisdiction to issue such a ticket as a result of the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma. In McGirt, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the historical Muscogee reservation was never formally disestablished, and thus roughly half of Oklahoma ought to be recognized as “Indian country” for the purposes of determining criminal jurisdiction.
“Both Tulsa and Mr. Hooper speculate about possible unintended consequences of either affirming or reversing the district court, but ultimately, we are limited to interpreting the law Congress enacted and not the parties’ ‘dire warnings,’” the court wrote.
