The U.S. Supreme Court case Herrera v. Wyoming (2018) revolved around the interpretation of an 1868 treaty between the United States and the Crow Tribe, which granted tribe members hunting rights on "unoccupied" lands. Clayvin Herrera, a member of the Crow Tribe, was charged with off-season hunting in Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming - a state that argued its admission to Union had nullified such treaty rights. The court ruled 5-4 in favor of Herrera, asserting that his actions were covered by the treaty and not subject to state regulation unless conservation necessity could be demonstrated convincingly by Wyoming authorities. This decision reaffirmed tribal sovereignty and recognized treaties as enduring legal documents.

In the dissenting opinion for Herrera v. Wyoming, Justice Alito argued that the majority's decision was a departure from precedent and an unnecessary expansion of tribal hunting rights. He contended that the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie did not grant members of the Crow Tribe an unqualified right to hunt on "unoccupied lands" in Wyoming but rather allowed them to do so only until such time as those lands were occupied by non-Indians or used for purposes incompatible with hunting. In his view, this occurred when Wyoming became a state in 1890 and thus extinguished any treaty-based hunting rights. Furthermore, he disagreed with the majority's interpretation of previous case law (Ward v Race Horse), arguing it had been misread and its precedents wrongly discarded. Finally, he expressed concern about potential implications for conservation efforts due to unrestricted off-season hunting.