United States v. Billy Jo Lara (541 U.S. 193)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 19, 2004 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 541 U.S. 193 · 124 S. Ct. 1628
- Decided
- April 19, 2004
- Term
- October Term 2003
- Vote
- 7–2
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court. This case concerns a congressional statute “recognizing] and affirming]” the “inherent” authority of a tribe to bring a criminal misdemeanor prosecution against an Indian who is not a member of that tribe — authority that this Court previously held a tribe did not possess. Compare 25 U. S. C. § 1301(2) with Duro v. Reina, 495 U. S. 676 (1990). We must decide whether Congress has the constitutional power to relax restrictions that the political branches have, over time, placed on the exercise of a tribe’s inherent legal authority. We conclude that Congress does possess this power. I Respondent Billy Jo Lara is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in north-central North Dakota. He married a member of a different tribe, the Spirit Lake Tribe, and lived with his wife and children on the Spirit Lake Reservation, also located in North Dakota. See Brief for Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe of North Dakota et al. as Amici Curiae 4-5. After several incidents of serious misconduct, the Spirit Lake Tribe issued an order excluding him from the reservation. Lara ignored the order; federal officers stopped him; and he struck one of the arresting officers. 324 F. 3d 635, 636 (CA8 2003) (en banc). The Spirit Lake Tribe subsequently prosecuted Lara in the Spirit Lake Tribal Court for “violence to a policeman.” Ibid. Lara…
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