Opinion ID: 166407
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The BLM Interpretation

Text: In making its administrative determinations, the BLM found that three criteria must be satisfied for a right of way to be recognized under R.S. 2477: “The claimed right-of-way must have been located on unreserved public lands; it must have been actually constructed; and it must have been a highway.” The agency further defined each of these terms. See pages 80, 95, and 97-98 below. These criteria draw heavily on a 1980 letter written by the Deputy Solicitor of the Department of the Interior, Frederick Ferguson, to an Assistant Attorney General 46 at the Land and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice, James Moorman. Supp. App. 46 (April 28, 1980). In 1994, the criteria were incorporated in proposed regulations issued by the BLM. See 59 Fed. Reg. 39,216 (Aug. 1, 1994). Congress, however, passed a permanent appropriations rider preventing those regulations from taking effect unless expressly authorized by statute. U.S. Department of the Interior and Related Agencies’ Appropriations Act, 1997, § 108, enacted by the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 1997, Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009 (1996). Accordingly, the BLM criteria have never been adopted by the agency through a formal rule or regulation and do not have the force of law. Nonetheless, the BLM used these criteria in making each of the determinations at issue in this case. The district court, recognizing that the BLM’s interpretation of the statute “appears in informal policy statements and opinion letters,” declined to accord the interpretation Chevron deference, instead giving it “respect,” but “only to the extent that [it has] the ‘power to persuade.’” Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Bureau of Land Management, 147 F.Supp.2d 1130, 1135 (D. Utah 2001) (quoting Christiansen v. Harris County, 529 U.S. 576, 586 (2000), in turn quoting Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140 (1944)). Under Skidmore, the degree of deference given informal agency interpretations will “vary with circumstances, and courts have looked to the degree of the agency’s care, its consistency, 47 formality, and relative expertness, and to the persuasiveness of the agency’s position.” United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 228 (2001) (footnotes omitted). Upon consideration of each of the elements of the BLM’s statutory interpretation, under this standard, the district court found “the BLM’s statutory interpretation of R.S. 2477 to be both reasonable and persuasive and concur[red] with the BLM interpretation.” 147 F.Supp.2d at 1145. On appeal, the BLM contends that the district court erred in not according its interpretation Chevron deference, arguing that such deference is applicable to an agency’s “interpretation of the relevant statute after an extensive adjudicatory proceeding in a final Secretarial action that carries the force of law, namely its administrative determinations concerning the validity of the Counties’ right-ofway claims across public lands administered by the Secretary.” BLM Br. 44. Because this Court concluded in the previous section of this opinion that the administrative determinations were not entitled to the force of law, this argument fails as well. The district court was correct to accord the BLM’s interpretation no more than Skidmore deference. The Counties argue that BLM’s statutory interpretation is entitled to no deference at all. Describing the BLM’s interpretation as a “mid-litigation attempt to create a federal standard of highway law,” San Juan County argues that this Court should defer instead to regulations and policy statements from 1939, 1955, 48 1963, and 1974, which, the County argues, incorporated a state law standard. S.J.C. Br. 29-30. The County further notes that in 1988 the Secretary of the Interior issued a policy statement that repudiated arguments based on the 1980 Deputy Solicitor’s letter. Id. at 28. The BLM counters that “[i]n contrast to the administrative determinations, the Department’s various policy statements over the years interpreting R.S. 2477 did not have the force of law and did not legally bind the Department.” BLM Br. 46 n.14. It notes also that the policy statement issued in 1988 was rescinded in 1997. Id. While we have no reason to question the “care” with which the BLM approached its task of statutory interpretation, or the “formality” with which it conducted its administrative determinations, this squabble amply demonstrates that the agency’s interpretation lacks the “consistency” that is required to warrant strong Skidmore deference. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. at 228. As near as we can tell, the agency has shifted its position on this issue at least three times since the repeal of R.S. 2477 in 1976. In light of the fact that FLPMA explicitly preserved and protected R.S. 2477 rights of way in existence as of October 21, 1976, and that those rights have the status of vested real property rights, any post-1976 changes in agency interpretation of the repealed statute have questionable applicability. The BLM argues that while the administrative determinations at issue here 49 “reflect the Department’s interpretation of R.S. 2477 as it applies to those determinations, the Department retains discretion to reconsider its interpretation of R.S. 2477 in the context of future administrative policymaking, adjudications, determinations, and rulemaking.” BLM Br. 44-45 n.13. While it is ordinarily true that agencies with the delegated authority to interpret and enforce federal statutes have the discretion to reconsider and change their interpretations, Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 42 (1983), it is hard to square such law-changing discretion with the concept of property rights that vested, if at all, on or before a date almost 30 years ago. This is further reason to doubt that R.S. 2477 rights are subject to administrative definition and redefinition. Moreover, we are hesitant to give decisive legal weight to an agency’s interpretation when the regulations in which that interpretation was embodied were blocked by a vote of Congress. See U.S. Department of the Interior and Related Agencies’ Appropriations Act, 1997, § 108, enacted by the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 1997, Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009 (1996). To be sure, neither the language nor the legislative history of the congressional prohibition specifies what it was about the regulations Congress found objectionable. It is possible that Congress objected to the regulation’s procedural provisions rather than its substantive interpretations of law. 50 Nonetheless, where Congress has taken action to prevent implementation of agency rules, and those rules have never been adopted by formal agency action, we do not think it appropriate for a court to defer to those rules in the interpretation of a federal statute. This does not mean we disregard the BLM interpretation. It means only that the interpretation receives no more “respect” than what comes from its “persuasiveness.” Mead Corp., 533 U.S. at 228.