Here is the opinion in Bayles v. Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (E.D. Okla.):
Prior post addressing claims against the tribe is here.
Oklahoma Federal Court Dismisses Choctaw Inmates’ Claims against State Actors
Criminal
Tenth Circuit Reverses Dismissal of Section 1983 Claim by Tribal Citizen against Oklahoma Cops
Worth Reading: Fired Officers in Washington State Disproportionately Land at Tribal Police Departments
July 20 article by Melanie Henshaw, published by InvestigateWest. Link to article is here. The article isn’t a polemical attack on tribes; it identifies a number of structural reasons for this phenomenon.
State Rep. Chris Stearns, D-Auburn, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and sponsor of the state bill on pension access for tribes, says that in his experience working closely with tribes, there’s a strong desire to hire qualified candidates that will best protect the needs, culture, and interests of tribal citizens, elders, and children.
Native Americans face the highest risk of deadly police violence of any race, and 2026 research from the University of Washington shows Native Americans on and near reservations face a disproportionate risk of being killed by police, with the report stating that a “coordinated public health response to police violence is urgently needed in Indian Country.”
“They should have an interest in hiring the best people,” Stearns said. “You don’t want your elders to get roughed up by someone, that goes against our values.”
New Empirical Research on the Impacts of McGirt and Castro-Huerta
Alexandra Fay, Stephen Galoob, W. Robert (Will) Thomas, and Jeffrey Y. Zhang have posted “Testing McGirt” on SSRN.
Here is the abstract:
McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) and Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta (2022) reallocated criminal jurisdiction across federal, state, and tribal governments in eastern Oklahoma on a scale unmatched in modern American history. Three testable predictions framed the debate around these landmark decisions: (1) that the federal courts would be inundated and incapacitated (the Deluge Hypothesis); (2) that concurrent state jurisdiction over General Crimes Act cases under Castro-Huerta would either strengthen or undermine enforcement (the Dual Sovereignty Hypotheses); and (3) that Indian country defendants would face harsher or more lenient sentences in federal court than in state court (the Disparity Hypotheses).
We test these predictions against a novel dataset of over 140,000 Oklahoma state criminal sentences and nearly 1,500 federal Indian country prosecutions hand-collected from PACER. Four findings emerge. State sentences imposed on American Indian defendants in the McGirt reservation counties fell by roughly 78%, while sentences elsewhere held steady or rose. The federal deluge was real but short-lived, consistent with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ 2021 decision against retroactive application in Matloff v. Wallace. Federal General Crimes Act filings collapsed after Castro-Huerta, supporting the warning that concurrent state jurisdiction would result in federal underenforcement. However, the increase in state prosecutions in the affected counties apparently subsumed the decline in federal prosecutions. And across every offense category we examine, federal sentences are equal to or lighter than their state counterparts.
These empirical findings should inform the future of federal Indian law and policy. The restoration of reservation status triggers serious consequences for federal, state, and tribal courts, and these consequences can be managed without sacrificing the rule of law. McGirt challenged the federal courts but did not break the system. Courts can wield criminal procedural rules to limit the fallout of major jurisdictional change. Our findings also show that concurrent jurisdiction results in significant effects on criminal practice. For better or for worse, Castro-Huerta produced a substantial return of General Crimes Act cases to the state system. And despite their strained capacity, federal courts tasked with adjudicating Indian country crimes sentenced consistently throughout the surge, at levels at or below those of Oklahoma-one of the most punitive states in the Union.
Highly, highly recommended.
Oklahoma Federal Court Dismisses Choctaw Inmates’ Request for Federal Court to Assume Control over Tribal Justice System
Here are materials in Bayles v. Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (E.D. Okla.):
Montana Federal Court Orders BIA to Reconsider N. Cheyenne’s Request to Assume Law Enforcement Function
Here are the materials in Northern Cheyenne Tribe v. United States (D. Mont.):
Tenth Circuit Holds Screenshot of Tribal Membership Website is Sufficient Evidence to Show Indian Status
Ablavsky on State Criminal Jurisdiction in Indian Country
Gregory Ablavsky has posted “State Criminal Jurisdiction in Indian Country: A History,” forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review, on SSRN.
Here is the abstract:
In Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta (2022), the Supreme Court dismantled the long-standing black-letter principle that states lack criminal jurisdiction in Indian country absent congressional authorization by embracing a revisionist historical account emphasizing inherent state sovereignty. The consequences have been predictable: intense uncertainty and ongoing litigation. Oklahoma’s highest courts, for instance, have repeatedly endorsed inherent state jurisdiction over Native people within Indian country, employing Castro-Huerta to distinguish considerable contrary federal law and precedent.
The challenge, especially given the current history-minded judiciary, is that the claim that states have never asserted inherent criminal jurisdiction over Indian country is too simplistic and easily disproven, making it tempting to toss out the old rules. But the revisionist claim, advanced by some scholars and embraced by Justice Thomas, that states enjoyed expansive criminal jurisdiction, is also wrong. This Article attempts to offer a more rigorous legal history, moving beyond the handful of Supreme Court decisions to survey every identifiable state and federal case on inherent state criminal jurisdiction in Indian country. It depicts four distinct periods: an initial headlong assault on federal authority (1787–1834) ; an era of “great confusion” in which states pressed on the many uncertainties of federal Indian law (1835–1886) ; the jurisdictional chaos of the allotment era (1880s–1930s); and a period of relative statutory stability (1948–2022) that Castro-Huerta has now abruptly terminated. What this history shows above all is contestation—a cat-and-mouse game in which states seized on ambiguities to claim authority, only to be periodically rebuffed by the federal courts. But the mere existence of past conflict does not support broader state jurisdiction in Indian country. Rather, every conventional method of legal and constitutional interpretation undercuts the argument that such jurisdiction was ever meaningfully positive law. There are also strong normative reasons for skepticism, since state claims of authority were rarely motivated by public safety but were instead tools to facilitate Native dispossession and erode tribal self-governance. By recounting these complexities, the Article challenges the current legal instability that threatens the foundations of modern tribal sovereignty.
En Banc Materials in Tenth Circuit Indian Status Cases
Here are the opening briefs in United States v. Ruiz and United States v. Hebert:
Prior post with en banc petition materials and links to panel materials here.
Florida COA Reverses Conviction of Non-Indian on Miccosukee Lands Due to “Phantom Ordinance”
Here are the (hilarious, dare I say?) materials in Quiroga v. State:
Turtle Talk 
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