Page:United States Reports 546.pdf/328

 546US1

Unit: $U11

[08-22-08 15:19:53] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 546 U. S. 95 (2005)

117

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

stances, which tax is paramount? Applying the interest­ balancing approach described in White Mountain Apache Tribe v. Bracker, 448 U. S. 136 (1980), the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that “the Kansas tax, as applied here, is preempted because it is incompatible with and out­ weighed by the strong tribal and federal interests against the tax.” 379 F. 3d, at 983. I agree and would afﬁrm the Court of Appeals’ judgment. I Understanding Bracker is key to the inquiry here. Bracker addressed the question whether a State should be preempted from collecting otherwise lawful taxes from nonIndians in view of the burden consequently imposed upon a tribe or its members. In that case, Arizona sought to en­ force its fuel-use and vehicle-license taxes against a nonIndian enterprise that contracted with the White Mountain Apache Tribe to harvest timber from reservation forests. 448 U. S., at 138–140. The Court recognized that Arizona’s levies raised difﬁcult questions concerning “the bounda­ ries between state regulatory authority and tribal self­ government.” Id., at 141. Determining whether taxes for­ mally imposed on non-Indians are preempted, the Court instructed, should not turn “on mechanical or absolute conceptions of state or tribal sovereignty, but [calls] for a particularized inquiry into the nature of the state, federal, and tribal interests at stake.” Id., at 145. This inquiry is “designed to determine whether, in the speciﬁc context, the exercise of state authority would violate federal law,” ibid., or “unlawfully infringe ‘on the right of reservation Indians to make their own laws and be ruled by them,’ ” id., at 142 (quoting Williams v. Lee, 358 U. S. 217, 220 (1959)). Apply­ ing the interest-balancing approach, the Court concluded that “the proposed exercise of state authority [was] imper­ missible” because “it [was] undisputed that the economic bur­ den of the asserted taxes will ultimately fall on the Tribe,”