McGirt v Oklahoma, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case which ruled that, as pertaining to the Major Crimes Act, much of the eastern portion of the state of Oklahoma remains as Native American lands of the prior Indian reservations of the Five Civilized Tribes, never disestablished by Congress as part of the Oklahoma Enabling Act of 1906. McGirt was related to Sharp v Murphy, heard in the 2018–19 term on the same question but which was believed to be deadlocked due to Justice Neil Gorsuch's recusal due to having prior judicial oversight of the case. Sharp was decided per curiam alongside McGirt.
Background.
Prior to its statehood in 1907, about half of the land in Oklahoma in the east, including the Tulsa metro area today, had belonged to the Five Civilized Tribes. There had been several decades of warfare and conflict during the 19th century over these lands between the Native Americans and the United States, including the Trail of Tears. By 1906, the United States Congress passed the Oklahoma Enabling Act which had been taken to disestablish the reservations, and enabling Oklahoma's statehood. The former reservation lands, those of the Five Civilized Tribes as well as the other tribes in the state, were allocated into areas by tribe that were given suzerainty governing rights to the tribe to handle internal matters for Native Americans within the boundaries, but otherwise having the state retain jurisdiction for non-Native Americans and for all other purposes such as law enforcement and prosecution.
In Sharp v Murphy, Patrick Murphy, a descendant of the Native Americans, admitted to committing murder in the state of Oklahoma, and was subsequently tried by the state courts around 2015. During these trials, Murphy argued that the language of the Oklahoma Enabling Act did not specify that the Native American reservations were disestablished, and because he had committed the murder within the Muscogee reservation territory, that his crime was subject to federal jurisdiction and not state under the Major Crimes Act. This argument was rejected by the state and on its first appeal within the federal courts, but at the Tenth Circuit in 2017, the court found in favor of Murphy's argument that the Enabling Act did fail to disestablish the territories, and thus Murphy should have been prosecuted by the federal courts. The state petitioned to the Supreme Court in 2018, which accepted to hear the case. However, as Justice Neil Gorsuch was part of the Tenth Circuit panel that heard the case on appeal, he recused himself from all hearings on the case. With only eight Justices hearing the case, the case remained unresolved at the end the of 2018–2019 term; the Court had stated plans to hold another hearing on the case in the 2019–20 term but had not set a date. Many court analysts believed the case to be deadlocked due to Gorsuch's recusal.
