Opinion ID: 1165012
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The 1966 repeal.

Text: In 1966, the United States Congress repealed sections 3 through 7 of the 1929 Act. Pub.L.No. 89-588, 80 Stat. 811 (1966). The state asserts that this repeal means that there are no longer any federal restrictions on the use of the land granted under the 1929 Act. Its principal contention is that the repealing of section 3 of the Act removed any federal trust obligations. Section 3 had provided, in part: [I]t is hereby declared that all lands granted to said Territory are hereby expressly transferred and confirmed to the said Territory and shall be by the said Territory held in trust... . The state concludes that, once this language was repealed, the state could establish its own guidelines for how the land should be used. The legislative history of the repeal, the history of the school land grants in general and the plain wording of the habendum clause of section 1 make this theory of the state unsupportable. First, it is abundantly clear from the legislative history that Congress was willing to repeal sections 3 through 7 of the 1929 Act because it was satisfied that Alaska had adequate procedures in its own statutory law to prevent the type of abuses that the repealed sections were designed to prevent. In particular, it should be noted that in its first session in 1959, Alaska's new state legislature enacted a bill that provided for the disposal of public lands and resources along principles nearly identical to those contained in sections 3 through 7 of the 1929 Act. Like the 1929 Act, the state law required that lands and resources be sold to the highest bidder. See Ch. 169, art. IV, § 2, and art. VI, § 3, SLA 1959. In floor debates on the bill, Representative Rivers from Alaska was asked by one of his colleagues to clarify that Alaska had adequate procedural safeguards to manage university lands. Because of Alaska statutory law, Representative Rivers could assure him that such protections existed. It hardly seems possible that Representative Rivers intended to convey the message the state now asserts, that in fact the state would be free to use university lands for any purpose which it saw fit under some broad concept of the public interest. [4] Second, the state's argument fails to appreciate that, if Congress had intended to allow land to be used for other than university purposes, this would have signaled a major shift in federal land policy. The statehood enabling acts of at least nine other western states contain allocations of acreage for school trust lands totaling approximately 40 million acres. See Note, Compensation for Highway Easements Over School Trust Lands, 42 Wash.L.Rev. 912, 912 n. 5 (1967). In 1962, Arizona's legislature petitioned Congress to modify is enabling act so that municipalities could use school trust lands for parks, schools and other public purposes and compensate the trust at less than fair market value. Bills introduced by the Arizona congressional delegation failed to pass both houses. See Udall, Arizona's Public Lands  Mixed Blessing, Mixed Burden, 8 Ariz.L.Rev. 11, 13 (1966). It does not seem reasonable to conclude that Alaska, alone among western states, was to be treated so differently. Finally, it is clear that the language of the 1929 Act that was not affected by the 1966 repeal continues to impose a trust obligation upon the state. As noted above, the habendum clause, which remains in effect, continues to require that the land be used for the exclusive use and benefit of the university.