Oklahoma Attorney General John O'Connor has petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn—or at least narrow the scope of—a landmark 2020 ruling on tribal sovereignty that he said was inadvertently leading to a “criminal-justice crisis” and putting the public in danger.
O'Connor, a Republican, said in an Aug. 6 filing (pdf) that that the Supreme Court’s 5–4 ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which held that the state doesn’t have jurisdiction to prosecute major crimes committed by Native Americans in a large portion of eastern Oklahoma, has led to outcomes that are “calamitous and worsening by the day” for Oklahomans.
