Jimcy McGirt, Petitioner v. Oklahoma

Summary

The Supreme Court held that the land reserved for the Creek Nation since the nineteenth century remains Indian country for purposes of the Major Crimes Act: only Congress can disestablish a reservation, and no Act of Congress clearly expressing that intent exists, so allotment-era legislation, Oklahoma's historical prosecutorial practice, and demographic change cannot supply the missing disestablishment. The Court further concluded that the Creek lands are a reservation rather than a dependent Indian community, and that the Oklahoma Enabling Act routed federal-law cases to federal court, meaning the MCA governed from statehood and Oklahoma lacked jurisdiction to prosecute McGirt, an enrolled Seminole, for crimes committed on the reservation. The judgment of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals was reversed. Chief Justice Roberts dissented, arguing that Congress disestablished the reservation through a series of statutes read together with contemporaneous and subsequent understanding, and Justice Thomas filed a separate dissent contending the Court lacked jurisdiction because the state judgment rested on an adequate and independent state procedural ground.