“Wishes don’t make for laws,” wrote Gorsuch, rebutting efforts to wish away treaties that establish tribal jurisdiction.
The United States Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that nearly half the entire state of Oklahoma, as far as federal criminal law is concerned, is still under the jurisdiction of Native American tribes.
The plaintiff in the case, Jimcy McGirt, is a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Although charged and convicted in state courts, McGirt argued that his case belonged in federal court because the crimes had been committed on tribal land, specifically an area that was designated as belonging to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
The state of Oklahoma, meanwhile, had argued that those lands were no longer “Indian Country,” even though no formal law or treaty was made that would suggest as much.
In a 5-4 decision that saw conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch siding with the four liberal bloc justices, the Court ruled in favor of McGirt, finding that major crimes committed on Native American tribal land — described as nearly the entire eastern half of the state of Oklahoma — require federal courts to rule on them, not state ones.
Gorsuch held to a “textualist” vision of the law, a theory of jurisprudence that is typically embodied by right-wing jurists. Since the treaty that established the eastern half of Oklahoma as a reservation had not been formally removed, as far as criminal cases went, it was still in place.
“Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law,” Gorsuch wrote in his opinion.
