Judge Taylor also made the point that because the Cherokee people had no claim on the sacred land as property, they could not claim it has significance to their religion, as expressed in court by stating that the “free exercise clause is not a license in itself to enter property, government-owned or otherwise, to which religious practitioners have no other legal right of access. Since plaintiffs claim no other legal property interest in the land in question… a free exercise claim is not stated here.” Legal scholar Howard Stambor puts forth that Judge Taylor's appeal to property interests was regrettably limited to the settler framework of land rights and short-sighted in terms of history, referencing the plaintiff's memorandum in emphasizing the Cherokee people's inability to assert a “property interest” in their sacred lands, as they had already been “taken from them by a government bent on conquest” through political and military force.
