Gila River Indian Community v. United States

“Of all the attributes of sovereignty, none is more indisputable than that of [a State’s] action upon its own territory.” Green v. Biddle, 21 U.S. 1, 43, 8 Wheat. 1, 5 L.Ed. 547 (1823). Yet today, the majority holds that it was permissible for an agency to exercise what Chief Justice Roberts has called “an extraordinary assertion of power”1 by taking land into trust for an Indian reservation in the middle of one of Arizona’s most populated cities, contrary to the plain language of the Gila Bend Indian Reservation Lands Replacement Act, Pub.L. No. 99-503, 100 Stat. 1798 (1986) (“Gila Bend…