In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that two upstate New Yor

I'm responding to a PM on this question. There are plenty of interesting issues here.

First, let's tackle the issue with the subjunctive mood. The verb "rule" may be used in the subjunctive mood to give the impression of uncertainty, but in this sentence the author has chosen the indicative mood to imply the certainty of the ruling. We know that the subjunctive is not used because none of the answer choices have the proper subjunctive structure - subjunctive verb + that + infinitive verb form without "to" (example: I demand that he go to school.) The subjunctive structure is the same in present tense and past tense (example: I demanded that he go to school.) To have subjunctive, the sentence would have to read - ...the Supreme Court ruled that two upstate New York counties OWE...

Even though we aren't using the subjunctive mood, the structure of the sentence does require the use of "that". The ruling of the Supreme Court is a clause, so we need the "that" to set off a new clause. We can't say, "The Supreme Court ruled two counties" because that means the Supreme Court is now the ruler of the counties. If we say, "The Supreme Court ruled on the restitution/on the counties" the meaning has changed from the original and we are no longer talking about the ruling that required restitution from the two counties. We can eliminate C, D, and E on this basis.

Now on to the issue of pronoun ambiguity. I've posted several times that the GMAT seems to be ambivalent to pronoun ambiguity. What the GMAT seems to be consistent with is the requirement of the same antecedent with a pronoun. In answer choice B, the pronoun "their" appears 2 times ("...two upstate New York counties owed restitution to three tribes of Oneida Indians because of their unlawful seizure of their ancestral lands..."). The first appearance is a bit ambiguous, but the meaning seems pretty clear that the counties were the ones to unlawfully seize ancestral lands, so the antecedant for "their" is the counties. The second occurance of "their" refers to ancenstral lands, which were clearly owned by the Oneida Indians, so the antecedant for "their" has switched from counties to Indians. That is a switch that is not allowed by the GMAT so we can eliminate answer choice B (this is also an issue in C & D).

That leaves answer choice A...

KW