Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/481/704
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 14:17:55+00:00

Document:
2. The original version of § 207 effected a "taking" of appellees' decedents' property without just compensation. Determination of the question whether a governmental property regulation amounts to a "taking" requires ad hoc factual inquiries as to such factors as the impact of the regulation, its interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations, and the character of the governmental action. Here, the relative impact of § 207 upon appellees' decedents can be substantial. Even assuming, arguendo, that the income generated by the parcels in question may be properly thought of as de minimis, their value may not be. Although appellees' decedents retain full beneficial use of the property during their lifetimes as well as the right to convey it inter vivos, the right to pass on valuable property to one's heirs is itself a valuable right. However, the extent to which any of appellees' decedents had investment-backed expectations in passing on the property is dubious. Also weighing weakly in favor of the statute is the fact that there is something of an "average reciprocity of advantage," Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 415, 43 S.Ct. 158, 160, 67 L.Ed. 322, to the extent that owners of escheatable interests maintain a nexus to the Tribe, and consolidation of lands in the Tribe benefits Tribe members since consolidated lands are more productive than fractionated lands. But the character of the Government regulation here is extraordinary since it amounts to virtually the abrogation of the right to pass on property to one's heirs, which right has been part of the Anglo-American legal system since feudal times. Moreover, § 207 effectively abolishes both descent and devise of the property interest even when the passing of the property to the heir might result in consolidation of propertyas, for instance, when the heir already owns another undivided interest in the propertywhich is the governmental purpose sought to be advanced. Pp. 712-718.
* Towards the end of the 19th century, Congress enacted a series of land Acts which divided the communal reservations of Indian tribes into individual allotments for Indians and unallotted lands for non-Indian settlement. This legislation seems to have been in part animated by a desire to force Indians to abandon their nomadic ways in order to "speed the Indians' assimilation into American society," Solem v. Bartlett, 465 U.S. 463, 466, 104 S.Ct. 1161, 1164, 79 L.Ed.2d 443 (1984), and in part a result of pressure to free new lands for further white settlement. Ibid. Two years after the enactment of the General Allotment Act of 1887, ch. 119, 24 Stat. 388, Congress adopted a specific statute authorizing the division of the Great Reservation of the Sioux Nation into separate reservations and the allotment of specific tracts of reservation land to individual Indians, conditioned on the consent of three-fourths of the adult male Sioux. Act of Mar. 2, 1889, ch. 405, 25 Stat. 888. Under the Act, each male Sioux head of household took 320 acres of land and most other individuals 160 acres. 25 Stat. 890. In order to protect the allottees from the improvident disposition of their lands to white settlers, the Sioux allotment statute provided that the allotted lands were to be held in trust by the United States. Id., at 891. Until 1910, the lands of deceased allottees passed to their heirs "according to the laws of the State or Territory" where the land was located, ibid., and after 1910, allottees were permitted to dispose of their interests by will in accordance with regulations promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior. 36 Stat. 856, 25 U.S.C. 373. Those regulations generally served to protect Indian ownership of the allotted lands.
"No undivided fractional interest in any tract of trust or restricted land within a tribe's reservation or otherwise subjected to a tribe's jurisdiction shall descedent sic by intestacy or devise but shall escheat to that tribe if such interest represents 2 per centum or less of the total acreage in such tract and has earned to its owner less than $100 in the preceding year before it is due to escheat." 96 Stat. 2519.
The three appelleesMary Irving, Patrick Pumpkin Seed, and Eileen Bissonetteare enrolled members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. They are, or represent, heirs or devisees of members of the Tribe who died in March, April, and June 1983. Eileen Bissonette's decedent, Mary Poor Bear-Little Hoop Cross, purported to will all her property, including property subject to § 207, to her five minor children in whose name Bissonette claims the property. Chester Irving, Charles Leroy Pumpkin Seed, and Edgar Pumpkin Seed all died intestate. At the time of their deaths, the four decedents owned 41 fractional interests subject to the provisions of § 207. App. 20, 22-28, 32-33, 37-39. The Irving estate lost two interests whose value together was approximately $100; the Bureau of Indian Affairs placed total values of approximately $2,700 on the 26 escheatable interests in the Cross estate and $1,816 on the 13 escheatable interests in the Pumpkin Seed estates. But for § 207, this property would have passed, in the ordinary course, to appellees or those they represent.
For obvious reasons, it has long been recognized that the surviving claims of a decedent must be pursued by a third party. At common law, a decedent's surviving claims were prosecuted by the executor or administrator of the estate. For Indians with trust property, statutes require the Secretary of the Interior to assume that general role. 25 U.S.C. 371-380. The Secretary's responsibilities in that capacity, however, include the administration of the statute that the appellees claim is unconstitutional, see 25 U.S.C. 2202, 2209, so that he can hardly be expected to assert appellees' decedents' rights to the extent that they turn on that point. Under these circumstances, appellees can appropriately serve as their decedents' representatives for purposes of asserting the latters' Fifth Amendment rights. They are situated to pursue the claims vigorously, since their interest in receiving the property is indissolubly linked to the decedents' right to dispose of it by will or intestacy. A vindication of decedents' rights would ensure that the fractional interests pass to appellees; pressing these rights unsuccessfully would equally guarantee that appellees take nothing. In short, permitting appellees to raise their decedents' claims is merely an extension of the common law's provision for appointment of a decedent's representative. It is therefore a "settled practice of the courts" not open to objection on the ground that it permits a litigant to raise third parties' rights. Tyler v. Judges of Court of Registration, 179 U.S. 405, 406, 21 S.Ct. 206, 207, 45 L.Ed. 252 (1900).
The Congress, acting pursuant to its broad authority to regulate the descent and devise of Indian trust lands, Jefferson v. Fink, 247 U.S. 288, 294, 38 S.Ct. 516, 518, 62 L.Ed. 1117 (1918), enacted § 207 as a means of ameliorating, over time, the problem of extreme fractionation of certain Indian lands. By forbidding the passing on at death of small, undivided interests in Indian lands, Congress hoped that future generations of Indians would be able to make more productive use of the Indians' ancestral lands. We agree with the Government that encouraging the consolidation of Indian lands is a public purpose of high order. The fractionation problem on Indian reservations is extraordinary and may call for dramatic action to encourage consolidation. The Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, appearing as amicus curiae in support of the Secretary of the Interior, is a quintessential victim of fractionation. Forty-acre tracts on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Lake Traverse Reservation, leasing for about $1,000 annually, are commonly subdivided into hundreds of undivided interests, many of which generate only pennies a year in rent. The average tract has 196 owners and the average owner undivided interests in 14 tracts. The administrative headache this represents can be fathomed by examining Tract 1305, dubbed "one of the most fractionated parcels of land in the world." Lawson, Heirship: The Indian Amoeba, reprinted in Hearing on S. 2480 and S. 2663 before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, 98th Cong., 2d Sess., 85 (1984). Tract 1305 is 40 acres and produces $1,080 in income annually. It is valued at $8,000. It has 439 owners, one-third of whom receive less than $.05 in annual rent and two-thirds of whom receive less than $1. The largest interest holder receives $82.85 annually. The common denominator used to compute fractional interests in the property is 3,394,923,840,000. The smallest heir receives $.01 every 177 years. If the tract were sold (assuming the 439 owners could agree) for its estimated $8,000 value, he would be entitled to $.000418. The administrative costs of handling this tract are estimated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs at $17,560 annually. Id., at 86, 87. See also Comment, Too Little Land, Too Many HeirsThe Indian Heirship Land Problem, 46 Wash.L.Rev. 709, 711-713 (1971).
"This Court has generally 'been unable to develop any "set formula" for determining when "justice and fairness" require that economic injuries caused by public action be compensated by the government, rather than remain disproportionately concentrated on a few persons.' Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S., at 124 98 S.Ct., at 2659. Rather, it has examined the 'taking' question by engaging in essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries that have identified several factorssuch as the economic impact of the regulation, its interference with reasonable investment backed expectations, and the character of the governmental actionthat have particular significance. Ibid." Kaiser Aetna v. United States, supra, 444 U.S., at 175, 100 S.Ct., at 390.
If we were to stop our analysis at this point, we might well find § 207 constitutional. But the character of the Government regulation here is extraordinary. In Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S., at 176, 100 S.Ct., at 391, we emphasized that the regulation destroyed "one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as propertythe right to exclude others." Similarly, the regulation here amounts to virtually the abrogation of the right to pass on a certain type of propertythe small undivided interestto one's heirs. In one form or another, the right to pass on propertyto one's family in particularhas been part of the Anglo-American legal system since feudal times. See United States v. Perkins, 163 U.S. 625, 627-628, 16 S.Ct. 1073, 1074, 41 L.Ed. 287 (1896). The fact that it may be possible for the owners of these interests to effectively control disposition upon death through complex inter vivos transactions such as revocable trusts is simply not an adequate substitute for the rights taken, given the nature of the property. Even the United States concedes that total abrogation of the right to pass property is unprecedented and likely unconstitutional. Tr. of Oral Arg. 12-14. Moreover, this statute effectively abolishes both descent and devise of these property interests even when the passing of the property to the heir might result in consolidation of propertyas for instance when the heir already owns another undivided interest in the property. 2 Cf. 25 U.S.C. 2206(b) (1982 ed., Supp. III). Since the escheatable interests are not, as the United States argues, necessarily de minimis, nor, as it also argues, does the availability of inter vivos transfer obviate the need for descent and devise, a total abrogation of these rights cannot be upheld. But cf. Andrus v. Allard, 444 U.S. 51, 100 S.Ct. 318, 62 L.Ed.2d 210 (1979) (upholding abrogation of the right to sell endangered eagles' parts as necessary to environmental protection regulatory scheme).
The Government has a legitimate interest in eliminating Indians' fractional holdings of real property. Legislating in pursuit of this interest, the Government might constitutionally have consolidated the fractional land interests affected by § 207 of the Indian Land Consolidation Act of 1983, 96 Stat. 2519, 25 U.S.C. 2206 (1982 ed., Supp. III), in three ways: It might have purchased them; it might have condemned them for a public purpose and paid just compensation to their owners; or it might have left them untouched while conditioning their descent by intestacy or devise upon their consolidation by voluntary conveyances within a reasonable period of time.
* The Court's opinion persuasively demonstrates that the Government has a strong interest in solving the problem of fractionated land holdings among Indians. It also indicates that the specific escheat provision at issue in this case was one of a long series of congressional efforts to address this problem. The Court's examination of the legislative history, however, is incomplete. An examination of the circumstances surrounding Congress' enactment of § 207 discloses the abruptness and lack of explanation with which Congress added the escheat section to the other provisions of the Indian Land Consolidation Act that it enacted in 1983. See ante, at 708709.
When the Senate bill was considered by the House Committee on Indian Affairs, the Committee expanded the coverage of the legislation to authorize any Indian tribe to adopt a land consolidation program with the approval of the Secretary, and it also added § 207the escheat provision at issue in this caseto the bill. H.R.Rep. No. 97-908, pp. 5, 9 (1982). 3 The Report on the House Amendments does not specifically discuss § 207. In its general explanation of how Indian trust or restricted lands pass out of Indian ownership, resulting in a need for statutory authorization to tribes to enact laws to prevent the erosion of Indian land ownership, the Report unqualifiedly stated that, "if an Indian allottee dies intestate, his heirs will inherit his property, whether they are Indian or non-Indian." Id., at 11.
"No undivided fractional interest in any tract of trust or restricted land within a tribe's reservation or otherwise subjected to a tribe's jurisdiction shall descend 4 by intestacy or devise but shall escheat to that tribe if such interest represents 2 per centum or less of the total acreage in such tract and has earned to its owner less than $100 in the preceding year before it is due to escheat."
The three appelleesMary Irving, Patrick Pumpkin Seed, and Eileen Bissonetteare enrolled members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. They represent heirs or devisees of members of the Tribe who died in March, April, and June 1983. 7 At the time of their deaths, the decedents owned 41 fractional interests subject to the provisions of § 207. App. 20, 22-28, 32-33, 37-39. The size and value of those interests varied widelythe smallest was a 1/3645 interest in a 320-acre tract, having an estimated value of only $12.30, whereas the largest was the equivalent of 31/2 acres valued at $284.44. Id., at 22 and 23. If § 207 is valid, all of those interests escheated to the Tribe; if § 207 had not been enacted or if it is invalidthe interests would have passed to appellees.
I agree with the Court's explanation of why these appellees "can appropriately serve as their decedents' representatives for purposes of asserting the latters' Fifth Amendment rights." Ante, at 711712. But the reason the Court asserts for finding that § 207 effects a taking is not one that appellees press, or could press, on behalf of their decedents. A substantial gap separates the claims that the Court allows these appellees to advance from the rationale that the Court ultimately finds persuasive.
The Court's grant of relief to appellees based on the rights of hypothetical decedents therefore necessarily rests on the implicit adoption of an overbreadth analysis that has heretofore been restricted to the First Amendment area. The Court uses the language of takings jurisprudence to express its conclusion that § 207 violates the Fifth Amendment, but the stated reason is that § 207 "goes too far," see ante, at 718, because it might interfere with testamentary dispositions, or inheritances, that result in the consolidation of property interests rather than their increased fractionation. 8 That reasoning may apply to some decedents, but it does not apply to these litigants' decedents. In one case, the property of Mary Poor Bear-Little Hoop Cross was divided among her five children. In two other cases, the fractional interests passed to the next generation. 9 I had thought it well settled by our precedents that "one to whom application of a statute is constitutional will not be heard to attack the statute on the ground that impliedly it might also be taken as applying to other persons or other situations in which its application might be unconstitutional." United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21, 80 S.Ct. 519, 522, 4 L.Ed.2d 524 (1960) (citing cases). This rule rests on the wisdom that the "delicate power of pronouncing an Act of Congress unconstitutional is not to be exercised with reference to hypothetical cases thus imagined." Id., at 22, 80 S.Ct., at 523. 10 In order to review the judgment of the Court of Appeals granting relief to these litigants, an analysis different from the Court's novel overbreadth approach is required.
Section 207 differs from more conventional escheats in another important way. It contains no provisions assuring that the property owner was given a fair opportunity to make suitable arrangements to avoid the operation of the statute. Legislation authorizing the escheat of unclaimed property, such as real estate, bank accounts, and other earmarked funds, typically provides as a condition precedent to the escheat an appropriate lapse of time and the provision of adequate notice to make sure that the property may fairly be treated as abandoned. 11 Similarly, interpleader proceedings in District Court provide procedural safeguards, including an opportunity to appear, for those whose rights will be affected by the judgment. See 28 U.S.C. 1335; Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 22. The statute before us, in contrast, contained no such mechanism, apparently relying on the possibility that appellees' decedents would simply learn about the statute's consequences one way or another.
It is clear, however, that a statute providing for the lapse, escheat, or abandonment of private property cannot impose conditions on continued ownership that are unreasonable, either because they cost too much or because the statute does not allow property owners a reasonable opportunity to perform them and thereby to avoid the loss of their property. In the Texaco case, both conditions were satisfied: The conditions imposed by the Indiana Legislature were easily met, 12 and the 2-year grace period included in the statute foreclosed any argument that mineral owners did not have an adequate opportunity to familiarize themselves with the terms of the legislation and to comply with its provisions before their mineral interests were extinguished. As the Court recognized in United States v. Locke, 471 U.S. 84, 106, n. 15, 105 S.Ct. 1785, 1799, n. 15, 85 L.Ed.2d 64 (1985), "legislatures can enact substantive rules of law that treat property as forfeited under conditions that the common law would not consider sufficient to indicate abandonment ." These rules, however, are only reasonable if they afford sufficient notice to the property owners and a reasonable opportunity to comply. Ibid.
The conclusion that Congress has failed to provide appellees' decedents with a reasonable opportunity for compliance implies no rejection of Congress' plenary authority over the affairs and the property of Indians. The Constitution vests Congress with plenary power "to deal with the special problems of Indians." Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535, 551, 94 S.Ct. 2474, 2483, 41 L.Ed.2d 290 (1974). As the Secretary acknowledges, however, the Government's plenary power over the property of Indians "is subject to constitutional limitations." Brief for Appellant 24-25. The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment required Congress to afford reasonable notice and opportunity for compliance to Indians that § 207 would prevent fractional interests in land from descending by intestate or testate succession. 20 In omitting any opportunity at all for owners of fractional interests to order their affairs in light of § 207, Congress has failed to afford the affected Indians the due process of law required by the Fifth Amendment.
The Court of Appeals, without explanation, went on to "declare" that not only the original version of § 207, but also the amended version not before it, 25 U.S.C. 2206 (1982 ed., Supp. III), unconstitutionally took property without compensation. Since none of the property which escheated in this case did so pursuant to the amended version of the statute, this "declaration" is, at best, dicta. We express no opinion on the constitutionality of § 207 as amended.
Justice STEVENS argues that weighing in the balance the fact that § 207 takes the right to pass property even when descent or devise results in consolidation of Indian lands amounts to an unprecedented importation of overbreadth analysis into our Fifth Amendment jurisprudence. Post, at 724726. The basis for this argument is his assertion that none of appellees' decedents actually attempted to pass the property in a way that might have resulted in consolidation. But the fact of the matter remains that before § 207 was enacted appellees' decedents had the power to pass on their property at death to those who already owned an interest in the subject property. This right too was abrogated by § 207; each of the appellees' decedents lost this stick in their bundles of property rights upon the enactment of § 207. It is entirely proper to note the extent of the rights taken from appellees' decedents in assessing whether the statute passes constitutional muster under the Penn Central balancing test. This is neither overbreadth analysis nor novel. See, e.g., Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U.S. 470, 493-502, 107 S.Ct. 1232, ----, 94 L.Ed.2d 472 (1987) (discussing, in general terms, the extent of the abrogation of coal extraction rights caused by the Subsidence Act); Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 136-137, 98 S.Ct. 2646, 2665, 57 L.Ed.2d 631 (1978) (discussing extent to which air rights abrogated by the designation of Grand Central Station as a landmark, noting that not all new construction prohibited, and noting the availability of transferable development rights).
The word "descedent"an obvious errorappears in the original text. The Act of Oct. 30, 1984, 98 Stat. 3171which is not relevant to our consideration of this casecorrected the error by substituting the word "descend" for "descedent" in § 207. The Senate Report accompanying the Act described how "descedent" made its way into the 1983 statute: "[T]he bill actually voted on by the House and Senate was garbled in the printing. It was this garbled version of Title II that was signed by the President." S.Rep. No. 98-632, p. 2 (1984).
For example, the Government both provides a grace period and bears an affirmative responsibility to prevent escheat in the distribution of funds to which enrolled members of the Peoria Tribe are statutorily entitled under 84 Stat. 688, 25 U.S.C. 1222. See 25 U.S.C. 1226 ("Any per capita share, whether payable to a living enrollee or to the heirs or legatees of a deceased enrollee, which the Secretary of the Interior is unable to deliver within two years after the date the check is issued . . . shall revert to the Peoria Tribe").
COUNTY OF YAKIMA, et al., Petitioners, v. CONFEDERATED TRIBES AND BANDS OF the YAKIMA INDIAN NATION. CONFEDERATED TRIBES AND BANDS OF the YAKIMA INDIAN NATION, Petitioner, v. COUNTY OF YAKIMA and Dale A. Gray, Yakima County Treasurer.
Bruce BABBITT, Secretary of the Interior, et al., Petitioners, v. Marvin K. YOUPEE, Sr., et al.
Thomas R. PHILLIPS, et al., Petitioners, v. WASHINGTON LEGAL FOUNDATION et al.
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. ANTHONY PALAZZOLO, PETITIONER v. RHODE ISLAND et al.

References: § 207
 § 207
 v. 
 § 207
 v. 
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 v. 
 v. 
 § 207
 v. 
 v. 
 § 207
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 § 207
 v. 
 v. 
 § 207
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.