Court Opinion

ID: 9430891
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:49.233896+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:57.811140
License: Public Domain

*607Justice Scalia,
with whom Justice White joins, dissenting.
I agree with the Court that this case is live because of continuing dispute over California’s ability to assert a reclamation claim, ante, at 578.1 In my view, however, the merits of this case must be decided on simpler and narrower grounds than those addressed by the Court’s opinion. It seems to me ultimately irrelevant whether state environmental regulation has been pre-empted with respect to federal lands, since the exercise of state power at issue here is not environmental regulation but land use control. The Court errs in entertaining the Coastal Commission’s contention that “its permit requirement is an exercise of environmental regulation,” ante, at 589; and mischaracterizes the issue when it describes it to be whether “any state permit requirement, whatever its conditions, [is] per se pre-empted by federal law,” ante, at 593. We need not speculate as to what the nature of this permit requirement was. We are not dealing with permits in the abstract, but with a specific permit, purporting to require application of particular criteria, mandated by a numbered section of a known California law. That law is plainly a land use statute, and the permit that statute requires Granite Rock to obtain is a land use control device. Its character *608as such is not altered by the fact that the State may now be agreeable to issuing it so long as environmental concerns are satisfied. Since, as the Court’s opinion quite correctly assumes, ante, at 585, state exercise of land use authority over federal lands is pre-empted by federal law, California’s permit requirement must be invalid.
The permit at issue here is a “coastal development permit,” required by the California Coastal Act, Cal. Pub. Res. Code Ann. §30000 et seq. (West 1986). It is provided for by § 30600 of Chapter 7 of that Act (entitled “Development Controls”), which states that a person wishing to undertake any “development” in the coastal zone — a term defined to include construction, mining, and “change in the density or intensity of use of land,” §30106 — must obtain a coastal development permit from a local government or the California Coastal Commission. The permit is to be granted if the proposed development is in conformity with a state-approved local coastal program or, where no such program yet exists, if the proposed development “is in conformity with the provisions of Chapter 3 . . . and . . . will not prejudice the ability of the local government to prepare a local coastal program that is in conformity with Chapter 3.” §30604. The “local coastal programs” to which these provisions refer consist of two parts: (1) a land use plan, and (2) zoning ordinances, zoning maps, and other implementing actions. §§ 30511(b), 30512, 30513. Chapter 3 of the Act, with which these local coastal programs must comply, consists largely of land use prescriptions — for example, that developments providing public recreational opportunities shall be preferred, § 30213; that oeeanfront land suitable for recreational use shall be protected for recreational use and development, §30221; that commercial recreational facilities shall have priority over private residential, general industrial, or general commercial development, but not over agriculture or coastal-dependent industry, §30222; that oeeanfront land suitable for coastal-dependent aquaculture shall be protected for that use, *609§30222.5; that facilities serving the commercial fishing and recreational boating industries shall be protected and, where feasible, upgraded, §30234; that the maximum amount of prime agricultural land shall be maintained in agricultural production, §30241; that all other lands suitable for agricultural use shall not be converted to nonagricultural use except in specified circumstances, §30242; that conversions of coastal commercial timberlands in units of commercial size to other uses shall be limited to providing for necessary timber processing and related facilities, §30243; that the location and amount of new development should maintain and enhance public access to the coast, §30252; that coastal-dependent developments shall have priority over other developments on or near the shoreline, §30255; and that coastal-dependent industrial facilities shall be encouraged to locate or expand within existing sites, §30260.2
*610It could hardly be clearer that the California Coastal Act is land use regulation. To compound the certainty, California has designated its Coastal Act as the State’s coastal management program for purposes of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), 16 U. S. C. § 1451 et seq. Cal. Pub. Res. Code Ann. § 30008 (West 1986). The requirements for such a program include “[a] definition of what shall constitute permissible land uses and water uses within the coastal zone,” 16 U. S. C. § 1454(b)(2), and “[a]n identification of the means by which the state proposes to exert control over [those] land uses and water uses.” § 1454(b)(4).
The § 30600 permit requirement, of course, is one of those means of control — and whenever a permit application is evaluated pursuant to the statutory standards, land (or water) use management is afoot. Even if, as the State has argued before us and as the Court has been willing to postulate, California intended to employ the land use permit in this case only as a device for exacting environmental assurances, the power to demand that permit nevertheless hinges upon the State’s power to do what the statutory permitting requirements authorize: to control land use. The legal status of the matter is that Granite Rock, having received land use approval from the Federal Government, has been requested to obtain land use approval from the State of California. If state land use regulation is in fact pre-empted in this location, there is no justification for requiring Granite Rock to go through the motions of complying with that ultra vires request on the chance that permission will be granted with no more than environmental limitations. It is inconceivable *611that, if a labor union federally certified as an authorized bargaining agent sought injunctive or declaratory relief against a requirement that it submit to state certification for the same purpose, we would say that “[b]y choosing to seek . . . relief against the . . . requirement before discovering what conditions the [State] would have placed on the [certification], [the union] has lost the possibility” of prevailing. Ante, at 588. I see no basis for making the equivalent statement here. In the one case as in the other, the demand for state approval is in and of itself invalid. As the Ninth Circuit said in a similar case that we summarily affirmed:
“The issue is whether [the State] has the power of ultimate control over the Government’s lessee, and this issue persists whether or not a use permit would eventually be granted.” Ventura County v. Gulf Oil Corp., 601 F. 2d 1080, 1085 (1979), summarily aff’d, 445 U. S. 947 (1980).
Even on the assumption, therefore, that California was only using its land use permit requirement as a means of enforcing its environmental laws, Granite Rock was within its rights to ignore that requirement — unless California has land use authority over the federal lands in question.
In fact, however, this case is even more straightforward than that, for there is no reason to believe that California was seeking anything less than what the Coastal Act requires: land use regulation. The Commission’s letter to Granite Rock demanding a permit application read as follows:
“Because of the significant control and authority enjoyed by Granite Rock Company over the land subject to its mining claims at Pico Blanco and the concommitant [sic] significant diminution of federal discretionary control, this land cannot be included among the federal lands excluded from the coastal zone by the CZMA. . . . Consequently, because the land is located seaward of the coastal zone boundary established by the state legisla*612ture effective January 1, 1977, it is subject to the permit requirements of the California Coastal Act.
“This letter will serve to notify Granite Rock of its obligation to apply to the Coastal Commission for a coastal development permit for any development, as defined in Section 30106 of the Coastal Act, at the site undertaken after the date of this letter.” App. 22.
This letter contains no hint that only environmental constraints are at issue, as opposed to compliance with all of the requirements of the State’s coastal management program. Even in the litigation stage — both in the District Court and in the Court of Appeals — the argument that California was (or might be) seeking to enforce only environmental controls was merely an alternative position. The Commission’s more sweeping contention was that the land in question is not excluded from the CZMA, and that the CZMA permits designated state coastal management programs to override the Mining Act. See App. to Juris. Statement A-4, A-12, A-24. That argument has not been pressed here, having been rejected by both lower courts. 768 F. 2d 1077, 1080-1081 (CA9 1985); 590 F. Supp. 1361, 1370-1371 (ND Cal. 1984). It is perfectly clear, however, that the assertion that the State is only enforcing its environmental laws is purely a litigating position — and a late-asserted one at that.
On any analysis, therefore, the validity of California’s demand for permit application, and the lawfulness of Granite Rock’s refusal, depend entirely upon whether California has authority to regulate land use at Pico Blanco. The Court is willing to assume that California lacks such authority on account of the National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA), 16 U. S. C. § 1600 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. Ill), and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), 43 U. S. C. § 1701 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. III). Ante, at 585. I believe that assumption is correct. Those statutes, as well as the CZMA, require federal officials to coordinate and consult with the States regarding use of fed*613eral lands in order to assure consistency with state land use plans to the maximum extent compatible with federal law and objectives. 16 U. S. C. §§ 1456(c)(3)(A), 1604(a); 43 U. S. C. § 1712(c). Those requirements would be superfluous, and the limitation upon federal accommodation meaningless, if the States were meant to have independent land use authority over federal lands. The Court is quite correct that the CZMA did not purport to change the status quo with regard to state authority over the use of federal lands. Ante, at 589-593. But as the CZMA’s federal lands exclusion, 16 U. S. C. §1453(1), and consistency review provisions, 16 U. S. C. § 1456(c)(3)(A), clearly demonstrate, that status quo was assumed to be exclusive federal regulation.
Finally, any lingering doubt that exercise of Coastal Act authority over federal lands is an exercise of land use authority pre-empted by federal laws is removed by the fact that that is not only the view of the federal agencies in charge of administering those laws, see Brief for United States as Amicus Curme, but also was the original view of California, which until 1978 excluded from the Coastal Act, in language exactly mirroring that of the federal lands exclusion from the CZMA, 16 U. S. C. § 1453(1), “lands the use of which is by law subject solely to the discretion of or which is held in trust by the federal government, its officers or agents.” 1976 Cal. Stats., ch. 1331, §1, as amended by 1978 Cal. Stats., ch. 1075, §2, codified at Cal. Pub. Res. Code Ann. §30008 (West 1986).
Any competent lawyer, faced with a demand from the California Coastal Commission that Granite Rock obtain a § 30600 coastal development permit for its Pico Blanco operations, would have responded precisely as Granite Rock’s lawyers essentially did: Our use of federal land has been approved by the Federal Government, thank you, and does not require the approval of the State. We should not allow California to claim, in the teeth of the plain language of its legislation, and in violation of the assurance it gave to the Federal Gov*614ernment by designating its Coastal Act as a coastal management program under the CZMA, that it would use the permitting requirement to achieve, not land use management, but only environmental controls. We should particularly not give ear to that claim since it was not the representation made to Granite Rock when application for the permit was demanded. If environmental control is, as California now assures us, its limited objective in this case, then it must simply achieve that objective by means other than a land use control scheme. If and when it does so, we may have occasion to decide (as we need not today) whether state environmental controls are also pre-empted. More likely, however, the question will not arise in the future, as it has not arisen in the past, because of the Federal Government’s voluntary accommodation of state environmental concerns — an accommodation that could not occur here only because California neglected to participate in the proceedings. Ante, at 576-577, n. 1, 591.
I would affirm the court below on the ground that the California Coastal Act permit requirement constitutes a regulation of the use of federal land and is therefore pre-empted by federal law.

I would not rely upon the alternative ground that the dispute between these parties is “capable of repetition yet evading review.” Ante, at 578. Assuming that Granite Rock submits a new 5-year plan to the Forest Service and that California again seeks to require it to comply with the coastal permitting requirements, I see no reason why that action would evade our review. See Weinstein v. Bradford, 423 U. S. 147, 149 (1975). Moreover, for a dispute to be “capable of repetition,” there must be a “reasonable expectation that the same complaining party [will] be subjected to the same action again.” Ibid. The Court may be correct that it is possible that California will seek to enforce its permit requirement directly again, ante, at 578; but since California may well be able to accomplish what it wants through the Coastal Zone Management Act’s consistency review procedures, 16 U. S. C. § 1456(c)(3)(A), I do not think it likely that it will do so.

 The State Coastal Commission is responsible for issuing coastal development permits until the Commission has certified a local land use plan, Cal. Pub. Res. Code Ann. § 30600.5(b) (West 1986), at which time the responsibility devolves upon the local government, ibid. Regardless of which governmental entity has the authority to issue the permit, the requirements for its issuance are those set forth in Chapter 3 of the California Coastal Act discussed supra. These apply directly if a local coastal program has not been certified, § 30604(a), or by enforcement of the requirements of the local coastal program, § 30604(b), whose land use plan must conform with that Chapter in order to be certified, §§ 30512(c), 30512.1(c), 30512.2. Because local coastal programs consist of such classic land use regulation tools as a land use plan, zoning maps, zoning ordinances, and other implementing devices, §§ 30511(b), 30512, permits issued upon a showing of consistency with a local coastal program may be even more obviously land use control devices than permits issued upon a showing of consistency with the provisions of Chapter 3. But under the plain terms of the statute, the latter no less than the former are permits for land use. To establish the contrary proposition, which is essential to its holding, the majority relies upon nothing more substantial than the statement of counsel for the Commission, in oral argument before us, that “[T]he Coastal Commission issues permits based upon compliance with the environmental criteria in the Coastal Act itself.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 52, quoted ante, at 586, n. 2. Read literally (i. e., without inferring the adverb *610“exclusively”), the statement is true (the Act does contain some environmental criteria) but unhelpful to the majority’s case. If, however, counsel meant to imply that the Commission’s permits could not be conditioned upon compliance with the land use criteria, the statement would not only contradict the plain language of the Act, but would also be inconsistent with the litigating position taken by the Commission in the previous stages of this lawsuit, see infra, at 611-612.