546US1
Unit: $U11
[08-22-08 15:19:52] PAGES PGT: OPIN
Cite as: 546 U. S. 95 (2005)
99
Opinion of the Court
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court. The State of Kansas imposes a tax on the receipt of motor fuel by fuel distributors within its boundaries. Kansas ap plies that tax to motor fuel received by non-Indian fuel dis tributors who subsequently deliver that fuel to a gas station owned by, and located on, the Reservation of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (Nation). The Nation maintains that this application of the Kansas motor fuel tax is an im permissible affront to its sovereignty. The Court of Appeals agreed, holding that the application of the Kansas tax to fuel received by a non-Indian distributor, but subsequently deliv ered to the Nation, was invalid under the interest-balancing test set forth in White Mountain Apache Tribe v. Bracker, 448 U. S. 136 (1980). But the Bracker interest-balancing test applies only where “a State asserts authority over the conduct of non-Indians engaging in activity on the reserva tion.” Id., at 144. It does not apply where, as here, a state tax is imposed on a non-Indian and arises as a result of a transaction that occurs off the reservation. Accordingly, we reverse. I The Nation is a federally recognized Indian Tribe whose reservation is on United States trust land in Jackson County, Kansas. The Nation owns and operates a casino on its res ervation. In order to accommodate casino patrons and other reservation-related traffic, the Nation constructed, and now owns and operates, a gas station on its reservation next to the casino. Seventy-three percent of the station’s fuel sales are made to casino patrons, while 11 percent of the station’s fuel sales are made to persons who live or work on the reser vation. The Nation purchases fuel for its gas station from non-Indian distributors located off its reservation. Those distributors pay a state fuel tax on their initial receipt of Chambers, and Riyaz A. Kanji; and for the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska et al. by Thomas Weathers.
