The U.S. Department of Justice and Oklahoma business, oil and gas interests are worried that a Native American death penalty case at the U.S. Supreme Court could “radically” upend state civil, regulatory and criminal jurisdiction in eastern Oklahoma, including the city of Tulsa.

The case, Royal v. Murphy, raises issues the justices have wrestled with in the past but rarely in the form of a death penalty case. And the question itself offers little hint of the unusually high stakes presented by the Oklahoma challenge.