[RevolverNews] On Wednesday morning, the Court delivered its ruling in the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo v. Texas case. The case is one of countless disputes over the exact rights that Indian tribes have to ignore state laws on their reservations. When the Ysleta tribe came under federal jurisdiction close to forty years ago, it was done with the understanding that the tribe would not use its new federal status to open casinos with slot machines and other forms of high-stakes gambling illegal under Texas law. But later, the Ysleta reneged on this understanding, and sought to create casinos by calling their slot machines “electronic bingo.”Despite a 6-3 conservative majority on the Court, the case was a win for the Court’s more liberal faction. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch (who authored the decision) joined with Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor to uphold the Ysleta’s ability to offer their sham bingo games. As Chief Justice Roberts notes in his dissent, this electronic bingo is "about as close to real bingo as Bingo the famous dog."
Troublingly, Gorsuch’s opinion doesn’t simply dwell on the strict legal dimensions of the case, but waxes about centuries of harm allegedly inflicted on American Indians by the state of Texas.