Gorsuch and Thomas say SCOTUS should be blushing over refusal to 'correct' longstanding error

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas scolded their colleagues to start the week for declining to exercise their power to "correct" the federal government's longstanding "'plenary power' over internal affairs of Native American Tribes," likening the status quo to two of the most abominable cases in Supreme Court history.

Gorsuch's writing, which Thomas joined, came at the tail end of an orders list in which the high court refused to take up the petition for a writ of certiorari brought by Quentin Veneno, Jr., against the United States.

In that petition, Veneno asked the justices to overturn the 1886 decision United States v. Kagama, to hold instead that Congress "lacks the constitutional authority to criminalize conduct between members of the same tribe that occurs on tribal land, or