Ruling narrows tribal sovereignty

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday narrowed the sweep of its landmark 2020 decision declaring that much of eastern Oklahoma falls within Indian reservation lands, allowing state authorities to prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes against Indians on the reservations.

The ruling left in place the basic holding of the 2020 decision, McGirt v.

Oklahoma, which said that Native Americans who commit crimes on the reservations cannot be prosecuted by state or local law enforcement and must instead face justice in tribal or federal courts.

The vote Wednesday was 5-4, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was not on the court when the McGirt case was decided, casting the decisive vote.

The new case concerned Victor Manuel Castro-Huerta, who was convicted of severely neglecting his 5-year-old stepdaughter, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who has cerebral palsy and is legally blind. In 2015, she was found dehydrated, emaciated and covered in lice and excrement, weighing just 19 pounds.

Castro-Huerta, who is not an Indian, was prosecuted by state authorities, convicted in state court and sentenced to 35 years in prison. After the McGirt decision, an Oklahoma appeals court vacated his conviction on the ground that the crime had taken place in Indian Country.

In his dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts predicted that the decision would cause chaos.

“The state’s ability to prosecute serious crimes will be hobbled, and decades of past convictions could well be thrown out,” he wrote.