Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/419

 502us2$21K 08-19-96 17:39:52 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 251 (1992)

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Opinion of the Court

In support of their convergent arguments, the Yakima Nation and the United States cite this Court’s unanimous decision in Moe v. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, 425 U. S. 463 (1976), which they contend repudiates the continuing jurisdictional force of the General Allotment Act. In that case, the State of Montana sought to impose its cigarette sales and personal property taxes, as well as vendorlicensing fees, on Indian residents of a reservation located entirely within the State. It relied for jurisdiction upon § 6 of the General Allotment Act, but did not limit its claim of taxing authority to the reservation’s allottees or even to those activities taking place on allotted reservation fee land. Instead, the State made an “all or nothing” claim to reservation-wide jurisdiction (trust land included), arguing that any scheme of divided jurisdiction would be inequitable. Brief for Appellants in Moe, O. T. 1975, No. 74–1656, p. 17. We declined Montana’s invitation to ignore the plain language of § 6, which “[b]y its terms [did] not reach Indians residing” or conducting business on trust lands. Moe, 425 U. S., at 478. The assertion of reservation-wide jurisdiction, we said, could not be sustained. But we went much further: In light of Congress’ repudiation in 1934 of the policies behind the General Allotment Act, we concluded that the Act could no longer be read to provide Montana plenary jurisdiction even over those Indians residing on reservation fee lands: “The State has referred us to no decisional authority— and we know of none—giving the meaning for which it contends to § 6 of the General Allotment Act in the face of the many and complex intervening jurisdictional statutes directed at the reach of state law within reservation lands. . . . Congress by its more modern legislation has evinced a clear intent to eschew any such ‘checkerboard’ approach within an existing Indian reservation, and our cases have in turn followed Congress’ lead in this area.” Id., at 479.