Native Americans are winning at the Supreme Court – with help from Justice Gorsuch

WASHINGTON – Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch had been on the Supreme Court a little more than a year when he threw Native Americans a line in a century-old battle over fish.

In the 1850s, the tribes living in what would become Washington state gave up millions of acres of their land in exchange for the right to fish the salmon in the waters around Puget Sound. Culverts the state uses to direct streams under roads prevented salmon from spawning, reducing the species' population and threatening a way of life.

When the dispute reached the Supreme Court in 2018, Gorsuch shut down one of the state's arguments – that its transportation needs allowed it to renege on the promises made in treaties signed three decades before Washington became a state. 

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