The Muscogee Nation Supreme Court affirmed a district court’s ruling that Muscogee Freedmen are entitled to citizenship within the tribal nation and held that references to a “by blood” requirement in the nation’s laws have been unlawful since their inception. Muscogee Freedmen - people of African descent held in slavery by some Muscogee citizens prior to the U.S. Civil War - were granted citizenship by the nation’s Treaty of 1866 with the United States. Freedmen and their descendants held citizenship in the Muscogee Nation until a new constitution was written in 1979.