The Supreme Court expanded tribal authority across Oklahoma. Now the state wants to scale it back – By Adam Kemp (PBS Newshour) / April 26, 2022
OKLAHOMA CITY – Less than two years after a historic Supreme Court ruling over Native American rights, the state of Oklahoma is asking the nation’s highest court to revisit its decision.
State officials, led by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, filed more than 30 appeals, saying that the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling has led to crimes not being prosecuted in tribal courts and violent criminals being set free from prison. Oklahoma tribes have pushed back on those claims, saying they’re untrue, rooted in anti-Indigenous rhetoric and designed to threaten tribal sovereignty.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments to reassess the scope of its landmark McGirt v. Oklahoma ruling – but not to overturn it. What will be considered is a question of jurisdiction.
In July 2020, the justices decided by a 5-4 vote that much of eastern Oklahoma remains Native American territory, under the terms of an 1833 treaty between the U.S. government and the Muscogee Creek Nation. This meant that Oklahoma state authorities could no longer prosecute crimes committed by or against Native Americans and that jurisdiction for those crimes, instead, fell to federal and tribal officials. The 2020 decision reversed the state conviction of Jimcy McGirt, an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, for sex abuse offenses. The majority opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, held that Oklahoma didn’t have the jurisdiction to convict McGirt.
