Kiowa Tribe of Okla. v. Manufacturing Technologies, Inc., 523 U.S. 751, 13 (1998)

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Cite as: 523 U. S. 751 (1998)

Stevens, J., dissenting

jurisdiction to regulate fishing activities on its reservation," id., at 167, we had no occasion to consider the validity of an injunction relating solely to off-reservation fishing.

In several cases since Puyallup, we have broadly referred to the tribes' immunity from suit, but "with little analysis," ante, at 757, and only considering controversies arising on reservation territory. In Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U. S. 49 (1978), a Tribe member and her daughter who both lived on the Santa Clara Pueblo reservation sued in federal court to challenge the validity of a tribal membership law. We agreed with the Tribe that the court lacked jurisdiction to decide this "intratribal controvers[y] affecting matters of tribal self-government and sovereignty." Id., at 53. Our decision in Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold Reservation v. Wold Engineering, P. C., 476 U. S. 877 (1986), held that North Dakota could not require a Tribe's blanket waiver of sovereign immunity as a condition for permitting the Tribe to sue private parties in state court. That condition was "unduly intrusive on the Tribe's common law sovereign immunity, and thus on its ability to govern itself according to its own laws," because it required "that the Tribe open itself up to the coercive jurisdiction of state courts for all matters occurring on the reservation." Id., at 891.4 Most recently, we held that a federal court lacked authority to entertain Oklahoma's claims for unpaid taxes on cigarette sales made on tribal trust land, which is treated the same as reservation territory. Oklahoma Tax Comm'n v. Citizen Band of Potawatomi Tribe of Okla., 498 U. S. 505, 509-511 (1991).5

4 The particular counterclaims asserted by the private party, which we assumed would be barred by sovereign immunity, concerned the construction of a water-supply system on the Tribe's reservation. Three Affiliated Tribes, 476 U. S., at 881.

5 The Court cites Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U. S. 775 (1991), and Idaho v. Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho, 521 U. S. 261 (1997), as having "retained the doctrine" of tribal sovereign immunity. Ante, at 757. Each of those cases upheld a State's sovereign immunity under

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