Seminole Tribe v. Butterworth was a 1981 court case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Eastern District of Louisiana* Middle District of Louisiana...

. It allowed the Seminole Tribe of Florida

Seminole Tribe of Florida

The Seminole Tribe of Florida is a federally recognized Seminole tribe based in the U.S. state of Florida. Together with the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, it is one of three federally recognized Seminole entities...

 to conduct a gaming enterprise in Florida, and was a major U.S. court case protecting Indian gaming, and helped pave the way for Indian gaming, although it brought up the issue of implicit divestiture

Implicit divestiture

Implicit divestiture is the ability of the Supreme Court of the United States to solely determine the extent of an Indian Nation's sovereignty, an approach, of recent decades, to federal Indian policy, which is contradictory to U.S...

a judicial issue concerning the rights of indigenous sovereignty within the United States federal trust.

Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Butterworth on AltLaw