Opinion ID: 1176303
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Enabling Act

Text: The Enabling Act is a federal law. It provides a minimum guarantee for the integrity of state school trust land. Like the analogous provisions in the Arizona Constitution, § 28 of the Enabling Act ostensibly requires that the state only sell or dispose of school trust land at a duly advertised public auction following appraisal. However, the United States Supreme Court has declined to give effect to the literal protections of the Enabling Act. The United States Supreme Court confirmed an emphatic incursion on the explicit language of the Enabling Act in Lassen v. Arizona ex rel. Arizona Highway Department, 385 U.S. 458, 87 S.Ct. 584, 17 L.Ed.2d 515 (1967). In that case, in accordance with the plain terms of the Enabling Act, the state land department attempted to force the state and county highway departments to pay for material sites and easements on state school trust land. This would have curtailed a fifty-year practice to the contrary. The state highway department successfully challenged this change by judicial action. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed, reasoning that the easements and material sites did no damage to trust land and actually created an overall benefit to the trust and to the state. State v. Lassen, 99 Ariz. 161, 407 P.2d 747 (1965). Thus, the Court held that the state could acquire highway easements across school trust land without payment. Id. The state land department then appealed to the United States Supreme Court. On appeal, the United States Supreme Court first noted our view that the Enabling Act restrictions were inapplicable to state acquisitions of less than a fee interest and stated that this contention [was] plainly foreclosed by the language of the act which expressly applies to [e]very sale, lease, conveyance or contract. Lassen, 385 U.S. at 462 n. 6, 87 S.Ct. at 586 n. 6. The Court held, further, that Congress had intended to ensure full compensation to the trust fund from any use or disposal of the trust land. Id. at 463, 87 S.Ct. at 587. Therefore, the state was required to pay full compensation  appraised value  for the land it uses. Id. at 465, 87 S.Ct. at 588. Although it took a strict view of the full compensation provision of the Enabling Act, the Court declined to literally construe the public notice, public auction and high bid provisions of the same Act. Reasoning that the latter restrictions were intended to guarantee only that the trust fund would receive appropriate compensation for trust lands, the Court concluded that it was unnecessary to impose such conditions on transfers in which the abuses they were intended to prevent are not likely to occur. Id. at 464, 87 S.Ct. at 587. The Court held, therefore, that Arizona need not offer public notice or conduct a public sale on acquisitions of trust lands by the state highway department. Id. at 465, 87 S.Ct. at 588. The Court's holding on this point was reinforced by its belief that the public notice/public sale provisions of the Enabling Act were useless in an acquisition by a state agency because the state eventually could condemn the land in any event. Id. at 464, 87 S.Ct. at 587. The conclusion to be drawn from Lassen, of course, is that the federal act allows a state agency to acquire an interest in school trust land by either negotiation or condemnation. On any such acquisition, the agency must pay appraised value, but need not comply with the express language of the Enabling Act requiring public notice and public auction. If all that were involved in the present case was the interpretation of federal law, the Lassen interpretation of the Enabling Act would be binding precedent. However, we must answer to another authority  the Arizona Constitution.