Oklahoma Tax Commission v. Sac and Fox Nation (508 U.S. 114)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 17, 1993 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 508 U.S. 114 · 113 S. Ct. 1985
- Decided
- May 17, 1993
- Term
- October Term 1992
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice O'Connor
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case, we consider whether the State of Oklahoma may impose income taxes or motor vehicle taxes on the members of the Sac and Fox Nation. I The Sac and Fox Nation (Tribe) is a federally recognized Indian tribe located in the State of Oklahoma. Until the mid-18th century, the Tribe lived in the Great Lakes region of the United States. M. Wright, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma 225 (1951). In 1789, it entered into its first treaty with the United States and ceded much of its land. See Treaty at Fort Harmar, 7 Stat. 28. That was only the first of many agreements between the Government and the Tribe in which the Tribe surrendered its land and moved elsewhere. As part of its gradual, treaty-imposed migration, the Tribe stopped briefly along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers in what are now the States of Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska. Wright, Guide to Indian Tribes of Oklahoma, at 225-226. In the mid-19th century, the Sac and Fox Nation ceded land in several States for two reservations in Kansas, but the Government eventually asked it to cede these as well. Id., at 226. In 1867, the Sac and Fox Nation moved for the final time to the Sac and Fox Reservation in Indian Territory. Ibid. By the 1880’s, however, white settlers increasingly clamored for the land the Sac and Fox and other tribes held in Indian…
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