 In the meantime , the Court had changed . Justice Stewart retired , and President Ronald Reagan had appointed Sandra Day O 'Connor to replace him . During the re @-@ argument , Kellahin began with the fact the New Mexico was acquired via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo and that neither Spain or Mexico recognized Indian title and claimed that the tax was a veiled attempt to increase royalty payments . Cooney argued that there was no authority in statute for the Secretary of the Interior to approve a tribal tax and that the 1927 statute preempted the tribes authority in favor of the states being empowered to apply a severance tax on reservations . Nordhaus stated that the argument about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo did not apply , since no branch of the federal government had ever differentiated between these tribes and other tribes . The case was then submitted to the court . 
