Washington State Department of Licensing v. Cougar Den Inc.
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 19, 2019 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Decided
- March 19, 2019
- Docket
- No. 16-1498
- Argued
- October 30, 2018
- Term
- October Term 2018
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
How the Justices voted
- Majority
- Justice Breyer (wrote), Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan
- Concurring in the judgment
- Justice Ginsburg, Justice Gorsuch (wrote)
- Dissenting
- Chief Justice Roberts (wrote), Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Kavanaugh (wrote)
Oral argument transcript and advocates
Opinion excerpt
Thus, we must turn to the question whether this fuel tax, falling as it does upon members of the Tribe who travel on the public highways, violates the treaty. III A In our view, the State of Washington's application of the fuel tax to Cougar Den's importation of fuel is pre-empted by the treaty's reservation to the Yakama Nation of "the right, in common with citizens of the United States, to travel upon all public highways." We rest this conclusion upon three considerations taken together. First, this Court has considered this treaty four times previously; each time it has considered language very similar to the language before us; and each time it has stressed that the language of the treaty should be understood as bearing the meaning that the Yakamas understood it to have in 1855. See Winans , 198 U.S. at 380-381, 25 S.Ct. 662 ; Seufert Brothers Co. v. United States , 249 U.S. 194, 196-198, 39 S.Ct. 203, 63 L.Ed. 555 (1919) ; Tulee , 315 U.S. at 683-685, 62 S.Ct. 862 ; Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Assn. , 443 U.S. 658, 677-678, 99 S.Ct. 3055, 61 L.Ed.2d 823 (1979). The treaty language at issue in each of the four cases is similar, though not identical, to the language before us. The cases focus upon language that guarantees to the Yakamas "the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places, in common with citizens of the…
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