In McGirt, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Congress never properly disestablished the Indian reservations of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma when granting its statehood, and thus almost half the state was still considered to be Native American land.

The state claimed that tribal and federal law enforcement officials did not have the capacity to handle the number of crimes in considering this authority aspect; while the state authorities may hand over such crimes to federal and tribal ones, many of these remain unprosecuted, according to an FBI agent working in Oklahoma.

[1] The state feared an increase in the rate of crime due to the lack of capacity to enforce the law from the tribal and federal site.

Kavanaugh then wrote that the General Crimes Act, as codified in 1948, no longer considered tribal lands as distinct from that of the state.

Kavanaugh then concluded that state prosecution of non-Native Americans would not interfere with tribal governance, as established through White Mountain Apache Tribe v.

[5] Kavanaugh wrote "a state prosecution of a crime committed by a non-Indian against an Indian would not deprive the tribe of any of its prosecutorial authority.

Gorsuch asserted that tribal lands still have sovereignty from the state, and that Worcester still should be considered, writing "Where this Court once stood firm, today it wilts."