Supreme Court rejects Navajo suit seeking more water

key vote for the majority, while Justice Neil M. Gorsuch dissented with the court’s three liberals.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday dashed the hopes of the Navajo Nation for more running water.

The justices, in a 5-4 decision, threw out a lower court ruling that held an 1868 treaty confining Navajos to their reservation came with an implied promise that they would have access to water.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said the treaties that established the Navajo reservation did not come with such an affirmative promise.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett cast a

The cases are Arizona vs. Navajo Nation and Dept. of Interior vs. Navajo Nation.

Washington attorney Shay Dvoretsky, representing the Navajo Nation in a losing cause, had argued the court did not need to consider the Colorado River at this stage of the case.

“Today the average person on the Navajo reservation uses just seven gallons of water a day. The national average is 80 to 100 gallons,” he said. “The Nation asks only that the United States, as trustee, assess its people’s needs and develop a plan to meet them.”

For more than a decade, the Na-