Page:Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin.pdf/13

10 Petitioners raise two main arguments in an attempt to sow doubt into these clear statutory provisions. Neither creates the ambiguity petitioners seek.

For their opening salvo, petitioners try to make hay out of the simple fact that neither §101(27) nor §106(a) mentions Indian tribes by name. Had Congress wanted to abrogate tribal sovereign immunity, petitioners claim, the most natural and obvious way to have expressed that intent would have been to reference Indian tribes specifically, rather than smuggle them into a broadly worded catchall phrase.

But, as explained at the outset,, the clear-statement rule is not a magic-words requirement. Thus, Congress did not have to include a specific reference to federally recognized tribes in order to make clear that it intended for tribes to be covered by the abrogation provision. As long as Congress speaks unequivocally, it passes the clear-statement test—regardless of whether it articulated its intent in the most straightforward way. Cooper, 566 U. S., at 291.

Trying a different tack, petitioners point to historical practice. In statute after statute, they say, Congress has specifically mentioned Indian tribes when abrogating their sovereign immunity. And in no case has this Court ever found an abrogation of tribal sovereign immunity where the statute did not reference Indian tribes explicitly. See Brief for Petitioners 24–26.

These statistics sound quite noteworthy at first glance. But they do not move the needle in this case. For one thing, none of petitioners’ cited examples involved a statutory provision that was worded analogously to, and structured like,