[4] As this was before the enactment of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the tribe then sued the Broward County Sheriff in federal court to prevent him from enforcing state law on tribal land.

[12] This prompted a flood of litigation as the individual States attempted to shut down Indian gaming by either civil or criminal cases, efforts which typically failed, as in California.

While abiding with the federal prohibition on gambling machines and instruments, the Puyallaup Indian tribe, on their reservation, opened casinos that offered blackjack, poker, and craps.

[14] Federal law enforcement authorities arrested the tribal members operating the casino and charged them with violating the Organized Crime Control Act.

[19] Based on the Supreme Court decision in Cabazon that basically prohibited state regulation while allowing federal enforcement, Congress had to take some type of action.

[21][fn 5] At the same time, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) called for preemptive legislation allowing tribal control and prohibiting state interference.

[26] Many of the American Indian tribes were opposed to the legislation and the Mescalero Apache and Red Lake Band of Chippewa sued in an attempt to declare the law unconstitutional.

[38] In Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., the Court had held that Congress could also abrogate sovereign immunity under the Commerce Clause – but there was no majority in that decision.

The Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, struck down this abrogation as unconstitutional and further held that the doctrine of Ex parte Young does not apply in this situation.

He rejects the "critical errors" in Hans, which had read common law sovereign immunity to extend the jurisdictional bar of the Eleventh Amendment to suits between states and their own citizens.

Souter found it implausible that Congress would wish to see their statute made completely unenforceable simply because they had included a remedy for those injured by the failure of states to abide by it.

The decision in Seminole Tribe was described as having "exemplified the Court's increasingly adamant refusal to countenance the headlong expansion of Congress's regulatory power under the Constitution's Commerce Clause".