Joan Wagnon, Secretary, Kansas Department of Revenue v. Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (546 U.S. 95)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided December 6, 2005 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 546 U.S. 95 · 126 S. Ct. 676
- Decided
- December 6, 2005
- Term
- October Term 2005
- Vote
- 7–2
- Majority author
- Justice Thomas
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court. The State of Kansas imposes a tax on the receipt of motor fuel by fuel distributors within its boundaries. Kansas applies that tax to motor fuel received by non-Indian fuel distributors who subsequently deliver that fuel to a gas station owned by, and located on, the Reservation of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (Nation). The Nation maintains that this application of the Kansas motor fuel tax is an impermissible affront to its sovereignty. The Court of Appeals agreed, holding that the application of the Kansas tax to fuel received by a non-Indian distributor, but subsequently delivered to the Nation, was invalid under the interest-balancing test set forth in White Mountain Apache Tribe v. Bracker, 448 U. S. 136 (1980). But the Bracker interest-balancing test applies only where “a State asserts authority over the conduct of non-Indians engaging in activity on the reservation.” Id., at 144. It does not apply where, as here, a state tax is imposed on a non-Indian and arises as a result of a transaction that occurs off the reservation. Accordingly, we reverse. I The Nation is a federally recognized Indian Tribe whose reservation is on United States trust land in Jackson County, Kansas. The Nation owns and operates a casino on its reservation. In order to accommodate casino patrons and other reservation-related traffic, the…
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