SCOTUS Sides With The Muscogee!

The Muscogee (Creek) tribal group owns most of Oklahoma.

The Muscogee tribal group owns Eastern Oklahoma. The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the case, that tribal lands are protected by sovereignty (through the treaties established).

The Supreme Court handed a tribal group a huge victory. About half of the land in Oklahoma is within a Native American reservation, a decision that will have major consequences for both past and future criminal and civil cases.

The decision was 5-4. The Court's progressive wing includes Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. Also the conservative justice who was appointed by Donald J. Trump in 2017, Neil Gorsuch ruled in favor of the tribe.

The ruling will have significant legal implications for Eastern Oklahoma. Much of Tulsa, the state's second largest city with a population of 402,000 residents is located on Muscogee land.

"The Supreme Court today kept the United States' sacred promise to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of a protected reservation," the tribe said in a statement. "Today's decision will allow the Nation to honor our ancestors by maintaining our established sovereignty and territorial boundaries."

The four justices who dissented were Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh.

The Supreme Court's controversial 5-4 decisions. The progressive wing and one conservative justice ruled in favor of tribal groups.

Roberts in his decision believed it "will undermine numerous convictions obtained by the State, as well as the State's ability to prosecute serious crimes committed in the future," and "may destabilize the governance of vast swathes of Oklahoma."

Gorsuch siding with the progressive wing does at least give some hope that the Court isn't going to be ruling like a bunch of rubber stamps.

"Justice Gorsuch has made very clear in his short time on the bench that he takes the text deeply seriously," said Ian Heath Gershengorn, an attorney for Jenner & Block, who argued the McGirt's case before the Court. "And I think you saw that the core of his analysis today was a textual one. We felt like we had the right argument at the right time for the right justice."

Just about half of Oklahoma is part of a tribal reservation.

McGirt v. Oklahoma was a United States Supreme Court case which ruled that, as pertaining to the Major Crimes Act, much of the eastern portion of the state of Oklahoma remains as "Indian country" of the prior Indian reservations of the Five Civilized Tribes, never disestablished by Congress as part of the Oklahoma Enabling Act of 1906. McGirt was related to Sharp v. Murphy, heard in the 2018–19 term on the same question but which was believed to be deadlocked due to Justice Neil Gorsuch's recusal due to having prior judicial oversight of the case. Sharp was decided per curiam alongside McGirt.