Montana v. Crow Tribe of Indians

The Court’s meticulous treatment of this exhausting litigation, including its discussion of the way Cotton Petroleum Corp. v. New Mexico, 490 U. S. 163, 186, n. 17 (1989), bears on Crow Tribe v. Montana, 819 F. 2d 895 (CA9 1987) (Grow II), summarily aff’d, 484 U. S. 997 (1988), shows the error of *720requiring disgorgement to the Crow Tribe of all Montana taxes collected from Westmoreland based on coal mined from the ceded strip between 1976 and 1982. As the Court explains, ante, at 715, Cotton Petroleum makes clear that the taxes were objectionable not because the State was wholly disentitled to…