Millions of Americans are awaiting the imminent release of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case, which is expected to junk Roe v. Wade after half a century of it poisoning the U.S. constitutional order.
But Dobbs isn’t the only decision the Court is releasing this summer, and on Wednesday, Americans got another reminder that the Court is anything but an anti-woke bulwark.
On Wednesday morning, the Court delivered its ruling in the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo v. Texas case. The case is one of countless disputes over the exact rights that Indian tribes have to ignore state laws on their reservations. When the Ysleta tribe came under federal jurisdiction close to forty years ago, it was done with the understanding that the tribe would not use its new federal status to open casinos with slot machines and other forms of high-stakes gambling illegal under Texas law. But later, the Ysleta reneged on this understanding, and sought to create casinos by calling their slot machines “electronic bingo.”
Despite a 6-3 conservative majority on the Court, the case was a win for the Court’s more liberal faction. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch (who authored the decision) joined with Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor to uphold the Ysleta’s ability to offer their sham bingo games. As Chief Justice Roberts notes in his dissent, this electronic bingo is “about as close to real bingo as Bingo the famous dog.”
Troublingly, Gorsuch’s opinion doesn’t simply dwell on the strict legal dimensions of the case, but waxes about centuries of harm allegedly inflicted on American Indians by the state of Texas.
The Ysleta del Sur Pueblo is one of three federally recognized Indian Tribes in Texas. Its reservation lies near El Paso, and the Tribe today includes over 4,000 enrolled members. See About Us, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (June 2022), https://www.ysletadelsurpueblo.org/about-us. The Tribe traces its roots back to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish in New Mexico. In the revolt’s aftermath, the Spanish retreated from Santa Fe to El Paso, and a large number of Ysleta Pueblo Indians accompanied them. Soon, tribal members built the Ysleta Mission, the oldest church in Texas, and in 1751 Spain granted 23,000 acres to the Tribe for its homeland.
Things changed for the Tribe after Texas gained statehood in 1845. The State disregarded Spain’s land grant and began incorporating a town on tribal lands and issuing land patents to non-Indians. Over the years that followed, the Tribe repeatedly lost lands “without recompense.” Yet some tribal members remained on parts of their homeland, “determin[ed] to preserve [their] language, customs, and traditions.” In the late 1890s, the Tribe adopted a constitution to ensure “the survival of [its] ancient tribal organization.” After years of struggle, the Tribe also won formal recognition from Texas in 1967 and Congress the following year.
Gorsuch’s little digression about wrongs from more than a century ago shouldn’t surprise. As Scott Greer wrote for Revolver just a few weeks ago, Gorsuch has proven himself worryingly open to thought patterns that reflect the values of modern critical race theory.
READ MORE: Neil Gorsuch’s Woke Crusade to Rid America of Its “Racist” Past
From Revolver:
[Gorsuch] has shown several times that he’s committed to wrecking American traditions on behalf of a distorted version of American values.
Back in 2020, Justice Gorsuch handed over nearly half the state of Oklahoma to Indian tribes. His majority opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma, effectively stripped the state government of proper authority over the ceded Indian territory. The decision threw the state into chaos. Murder convictions were overturned, zoning and property rights disputes flared up, and who’s actually in charge of the ceded territory is still undetermined. “In our opinion, this is the biggest issue that’s ever hit any state since the Civil War,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said last year.
…
So why did Gorsuch issue it? Because America owes Indians the land for the Trail of Tears. “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever,” Gorsuch wrote.
Besides throwing Oklahoma into chaos as vengeance for the Trail of Tears, Gorsuch also joined court liberals to rule that non-unanimous jury convictions in criminal cases are illegal. Gorsuch’s reasoning was that, because lawmakers had racist thoughts a century ago when enabling such verdicts, the practice had to be unconstitutional. In 2018, Gorsuch joined four liberals to rule that a Trump Admin policy making it easier to deport illegal immigrants was “unconstitutionally vague.” And in 2020, Gorsuch authored the largest expansion of federal civil rights law in decades, ruling that when the 1964 Civil Rights Act barred discrimination on the basis of “sex,” it somehow also barred discrimination based on sexual orientation or “gender identity,” something nobody in 1964 had ever heard of.
As Greer wrote in May:
He’s not the worst justice on the court, nor is he a total disappointment. He’s much better when it comes to the Second Amendment and affirmative action. But it’s alarming for a conservative justice to uphold the left’s core understanding of our nation’s history.
Critical Race Theory teaches America was founded on white supremacy and the nation must make serious amends for its sins. This belief is shared by everyone on the Left—from your local college professor to Joe Biden. And it’s shared by Neil Gorsuch as well.
American patriots have long been aware that their 6-3 “conservative” court is not what it seems, because of Chief Justice Roberts’ gradual drift left over time. But today’s ruling is a reminder that Roberts isn’t the only judge capable of disappointing us.
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