Opinion ID: 105730
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the jurisdictional question.

Text: We first face the dual aspects of the jurisdictional question: has California's Supreme Court held a federal statute unconstitutional, and does its decision rest on an adequate state ground? Flournoy v. Wiener, 321 U. S. 253, 262 (1944). As we read the reasons, heretofore mentioned, upon which the Supreme Court of California invalidated the contracts, we conclude that they rest upon neither ground. As to the rights and duties of the United States under the contracts, these are matters of federal law on which this Court has final word. Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States, 318 U. S. 363 (1943). Our construction of the contract might dispel any features thereof found offensive. The other ground, namely, the 160-acre limitation, alone requires further consideration. Appellants claim that California's Supreme Court has held unconstitutional the federal statutes, § 5 of the Reclamation Act of 1902, as re-enacted in § 46 of the Omnibus Adjustment Act of 1926, relating to the 160-acre limitation. It appears to us, however, that the opinion actually turned on the court's interpretation of § 8 of the 1902 Act. In effect, the court held that this section overrides all other sections of the Act, requiring that it be construed as not affecting state laws relating to the control, appropriation, use, or distribution of water used in irrigation. Turning to state law, the court by applying a trust theory held that the Federal Government could acquire no title to appropriative water rights free of a trust in the State of California for the benefit of the people of the State. This limited measure of control of the appropriative water, the court said, 47 Cal. 2d, at 620, 306 P. 2d, at 837, prevented the imposition of the 160-acre limitation because the beneficiaries of the trust, namely, the people of the State and particularly those in the districts involved, would be deprived by the acreage limitation of a right to the use of the water in the district. We think it plain that this was a construction of federal law and not a holding of unconstitutionality. This, of course, provides no basis for an appeal, but the importance of the case, as we earlier noted, requires that certiorari be granted. We deem it equally clear that the judgments do not rest on an adequate state ground. The construction the opinion gave to § 8 of the 1902 Act nullified the specific mandate of § 5, as well as its re-enactment in the 1926 Act, and even though in the doing a state law may have been called into play, this would not immunize it from this Court's review. Basically it is the interpretation of the Federal Act that opens the door to the application of the state law and leads to the striking down of the contracts made by the Secretary. Nor would the suggestion that state law prevented the water districts and agencies of the State from entering into the contracts change this conclusion. We need not determine whether a State could in that manner frustrate the consummation of a federal project constructed at its own behest. The fact remains that the state law was, in fact, invoked only by the interpretation the court gave § 8.