Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch broke with conservatives and joined four other liberal justices in a 5-4 tribal rights decision Monday.
The Supreme Court upheld a Native American man’s hunting rights under a 150-year-old treaty. Crow tribe member Clayvin Herrera was charged in 2014 for off-season hunting in the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming but argued that a treaty signed in 1868 between the tribe and Wyoming allowed him to hunt any time of the year.
The state argued the treaty was nullified in 1890 when Wyoming achieved statehood, lower courts agreed, and the case made its way to the Supreme Court.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of four on the court appointed by Democratic presidents, wrote in the majority opinion there isn’t “any evidence in the treaty itself that Congress intended the hunting right to expire at statehood, or that the Crow Tribe would have understood it to do so.”
Gorsuch, who was nominated for the Supreme Court by President Trump in 2017, sided with liberal-leaning justices on another case involving Native American rights in March, writing a concurring opinion in the case. Gorsuch, 51, is from Colorado and received support from Native American organizations during his nomination. The groups cited his judicial record and his opinions on tribal sovereignty.
