ALITO, J., dissenting
right to hunt at the spot of his alleged offense, as the nearest settlement lay more than 60-miles distant, making the land where he was hunting “unoccupied lands of the United States.” In re Race Horse, 70 F. 598, 599–600 (Wyo. 1895).
This Court rejected Race Horse’s argument, holding that the admission of Wyoming to the Union terminated the hunting right. 163 U. S., at 514. Although the opinion of the Court is not a model of clarity, this conclusion appears to rest on two grounds.
First, the Court held that Wyoming’s admission necessarily ended the Tribe’s hunting right because otherwise the State would lack the power, possessed by every other State, “to regulate the killing of game within [its] borders.” Ibid. Limiting Wyoming’s power in this way, the Court reasoned, would contravene the equal-footing doctrine, which dictates that all States enter the Union with the full panoply of powers enjoyed by the original 13 States at the adoption of the Constitution. Ibid. Under this rationale, the Act of Congress admitting Wyoming could not have preserved the hunting right even if that had been Congress’s wish.
After providing this basis for its holding, however, the Court quickly turned to a second ground, namely, that even if Congress could have limited Wyoming’s authority in this way, it had not attempted to do so. Id., at 515. The Court thought that Congress’s intention not to impose such a restriction on the State was “conveyed by the express terms of the act of admission,” but the Court did not identify the terms to which it was referring. Ibid. It did, however, see support for its decision in the nature of the
unoccupied lands of the United States, so long as game may be found thereon, and so long as peace subsists among the whites and Indians on the borders of the hunting districts.’ ” Race Horse, 163 U. S., at 507; Kappler 1020, 1021.
