Days after this decision, the tribe approved a special ordinance and resolution in response to Battin's ruling and reasserted their authority to regulate non-members' sporting activities on tribal land, empowering tribal game wardens and police to arrest non-members going on the reservation to boat, fish, trap, or hunt.

Chairman Patrick Stands Over Bull, Thomas Lynaugh (attorney), and eighteen other delegates went to D.C. to "argue their case" to the government.

The tribe felt that Battin's ruling undermined their sovereignty as well as threatened future coal production and water rights.

Kennedy also made reference to the Fort Laramie treaties, stating that the establishment of the reservation was to provide a permanent homeland for the people and that they had every right to the resources contained within it.

Kennedy applied traditional canons of Indian law by stating that the negotiations of the two treaties had no other meaning to the natives other than the fact that the "government recognized all lands within the metes and bounds of the reservation were theirs."

Again, Battin ruled in favor of the state, holding that Montana did have authority to regulate non-members on the river and on all non-Indian fee land within the reservation.

They supported these claims with the Oliphant case, which denied tribes inherent sovereign authority to exercise criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.

[2] While the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie conveyed land to the Crow Tribe, setting it "apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Indians," it did not explicitly refer to the riverbed.

[11] Second, analogizing to Oliphant's holding in the context of criminal jurisdiction, the Court held that Tribes do not have inherent sovereign power to exercise civil jurisdiction over activities occurring on fee-simple reservation land owned by nonmembers unless (1) the nonmembers have entered "consensual relationships with the tribe or its members, through commercial dealing, contracts, leases, or other arrangements"[3] or (2) the nonmember's "conduct threatens or has some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe.

Harry Blackmun's dissenting opinion, with William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall joining, addresses the issue of the canons of construction regarding treaties.

...In holding today that the bed of the Bighorn River passed to the State of Montana upon its admission to the Union, the Court disregards this settled rule of statutory construction.

...the Crow were assured in 1867 that they would receive "a tract of your country as a home for yourselves and children forever, upon which your great Father [the US President] will not permit the white man to trespass.

"Rebutting the 'equal footing' argument, the dissent in part II states: ...it defies common sense to suggest that the Crow Indians would have so understood the terms of the Fort Laramie Treaties.

Indeed, Chief Blackfoot, when addressed by Commissioner Taylor, responded: 'The Crows used to own all this Country including all the rivers of the West.'

The conclusion is inescapable that the Crow Indians understood that they retained the ownership of at least those rivers within the metes and bounds of the reservation [450 U.S. 544, 579] granted them.

[13] Montana v. United States is a critical case because, in part, it left behind a "cauldron of confusion" regarding jurisdiction.

"[17] The Montana decision was used again in the Atkinson Trading Company v. Shirley (2001)[18] to strike down a tax imposed on non-tribal members for operating a hotel on lands owned by the Navajo Reservation.

The Ford Motor Company entered federal court looking to challenge the issue of tribal jurisdiction in this case.

An important part of Montana is the ability of the tribes to regulate all activity related to tribal interests under the first "direct effects" exception.