Cite as: 528 U. S. 495 (2000)
Stevens, J., dissenting
ber and a nonmember if admitted by the council); Revised Constitution of the Jicarilla Apache Tribe, Art. III (member-ship consists of persons on official roll of 1968 and children of one member of the Tribe who are at least three-eighths Jicarilla Apache Indian blood); Revised Constitution Mescalero Apache Tribe, Art. IV (membership consists of persons on the official roll of 1936 and children born to at least one enrolled member who are at least one-fourth degree Mescalero Apache blood).
Of course, a Native American tribe has broad authority to define its membership. See Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U. S. 49, 72, n. 32 (1978). There must, however, be some limit on what is reasonable, at the least when a State (which is not itself a tribe) creates the definition. And to define that membership in terms of 1 possible ancestor out of 500, thereby creating a vast and unknowable body of potential members—leaving some combination of luck and interest to determine which potential members become actual voters—goes well beyond any reasonable limit. It was not a tribe, but rather the State of Hawaii, that created this definition; and, as I have pointed out, it is not like any actual membership classification created by any actual tribe.
These circumstances are sufficient, in my view, to destroy the analogy on which Hawaii's justification must depend. This is not to say that Hawaii's definitions themselves independently violate the Constitution, cf. post, at 535-536, n. 11 (Justice Stevens, dissenting); it is only to say that the analogies they here offer are too distant to save a race-based voting definition that in their absence would clearly violate the Fifteenth Amendment. For that reason I agree with the majority's ultimate conclusion.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins as to Part II, dissenting.
The Court's holding today rests largely on the repetition of glittering generalities that have little, if any, application
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