How does American Indian tribal sovereignty affect the states relationships with the tribes?
The states have no power to limit the tribes’ sovereign powers. In general, state civil regulatory laws do not apply to American Indians on reservations. A state has authority to act within the reservation only to the extent that Congress explicitly authorizes it to act as it did, for example, in Public Law 280, discussed on pages 43 – 46. Thus, even though a reservation is located within the boundaries of a state, and the state has some responsibilities to the members of the tribe, the state may exercise few of its normal powers of regulation and taxation within that reservation. As noted in a National Conference of State Legislatures publication, “Any state jurisdiction over activities on the reservation creates confusion on the part of the regulated community, jurisdictional disputes between the regulators, and often fuels difficult relations between states and tribes.”(46) Are there any recent developments in the area of American Indian tribal sovereignty? On February 27, 1998, Sen
