Nevada, et al. v. Floyd Hicks, et al. (533 U.S. 353)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 25, 2001 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 533 U.S. 353 · 121 S. Ct. 2304
- Decided
- June 25, 2001
- Term
- October Term 2000
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Scalia
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court. This case presents the question whether a tribal court may assert jurisdiction over civil claims against state officials who entered tribal land to execute a search warrant against a tribe member suspected of having violated state law outside the reservation. I Respondent Hicks is one of about 900 members of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribes of western Nevada. He resides on the Tribes’ reservation of approximately 8,000 acres, established by federal statute in 1908, ch. 53, 35 Stat. 85. In 1990 Hicks came under suspicion of having killed, off the reservation, a California bighorn sheep, a gross misdemeanor under Nevada law, see Nev. Rev. Stat. §501.376 (1999). A state game warden obtained from state court a search warrant “SUBJECT TO OBTAINING APPROVAL FROM THE FALLON TRIBAL COURT IN AND FOR THE FALLON PAIUTE-SHOSHONE TRIBES.” According to the issuing judge, this tribal-court authorization was necessary because “[tjhis Court has no jurisdiction on the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Indian Reservation.” App. G to Pet. for Cert. 1. A search warrant was obtained from the tribal court, and the warden, accompanied by a tribal police officer, searched respondent’s yard, uncovering only the head of a Rocky Mountain bighorn, a different (and unprotected) species of sheep. Approximately one year later, a tribal police officer reported to the…
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