Court Opinion

ID: 9427926
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:15.867323+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:10.587324
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Powell,
with whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Blackmun, and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join,
dissenting.
Since the early days of the Republic, the Federal Government’s compact with each new State has granted the State land for the support of education and allowed the State to *521select land of equal acreage as indemnity for deficiencies in the original grant. Today, the Court holds that the Taylor Grazing Act abrogated those compacts by approving selection requirements completely at odds with the equal acreage principle. Nothing in the Court’s opinion persuades me that Congress meant so lightly to breach compacts that it has respected and enforced throughout our Nation’s history. I therefore dissent.
The Court’s decision rests on three fundamental misconceptions. First, the Court reasons from the accepted proposition that indemnity lands compensate the States for gaps in the original grants to the mistaken conclusion that the States have no right to lands of equal acreage. Ante, at 507-510. This argument ignores the clear meaning of statutes spanning about two centuries in which Congress specifically adopted an equal acreage principle as the standard for making compensation. Second, the Court believes that the establishment of grazing districts under the Taylor Grazing Act has the same effect as a withdrawal of lands under the Pickett Act. Ante, at 513-519. This belief manifests a serious misunderstanding of both the history of federal land management and the language of the Taylor Grazing Act. Third, the Court assumes — without discussion — that the Taylor Grazing Act gives the Secretary of the Interior discretion to reject indemnity selections under standards inconsistent with the criteria set out in the statutes authorizing the selections. Every federal court that has considered the Secretary’s authority under the Taylor Grazing Act has rejected this assumption.
A correct understanding of this case requires careful examination of a labyrinth of compacts and statutes dating back to the early years of our national history. Part I of this opinion reviews the unbroken succession of laws that undercut the Court’s construction of the school indemnity selection statutes. Part II explains the development of the Taylor Grazing Act and its relationship to the Executive Orders withdrawing land under the Pickett Act. Finally, through a detailed con*522sideration of the Taylor Grazing Act's critical provisions, Part III demonstrates that the Act will not permit the construction that the Court has given it.
I
When the first 13 States formed the Union, each State had sovereign authority over the lands within its borders. These lands provided a tax base for the support of education and other governmental functions. When settlers sought to carve the State of Ohio from the Northwest Territory in 1802, they encountered a different situation. Vast tracts within the boundaries of the proposed State belonged to the Federal Government. Thus, the new State’s potential revenue base would be restricted severely unless the Federal Government waived its immunity from taxation.1 In order to place Ohio on an equal footing with the original States, Congress enacted a compromise drawn from the Land Ordinance of 17852 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.3 The compromise set a pattern followed in the admission of virtually every other State.4 Specific details varied from State to State, but the *523basic plan persisted. As consideration for each new State’s pledge not to tax federal lands, Congress granted the State a fixed proportion of the lands within its borders for the support of public education. E. g., Act of Apr. 30, 1802, § 7, 2 Stat. 175 (Ohio); Act of Jan. 29, 1861, § 3, 12 Stat. 127-128 (Kansas); Act of July 16, 1894, §§ 3, 6, 28 Stat. 108-109 (Utah); see United States v. Morrison, 240 U. S. 192, 201 (1916).5
These agreements were solemn bilateral compacts between each State and the Federal Government. See ante, at 507; United States v. Morrison, supra, at 201-202; Cooper v. Roberts, 18 How. 173, 177-179 (1856). For its part, the Government granted the State specific sections of land within each township laid out by federal survey. The granted sections were specified by number to ensure that the State would receive a random cross section of the public land. Title to the sections vested in the State upon approval of the survey. United States v. Morrison, supra, at 207, 212; Beecher v. Wetherby, 95 U. S. 517 (1877). Should these grants in place prove unavailable, the Federal Government promised to grant the State indemnity in other lands of equal acreage. In return, Congress required the State to memorialize its pledge not to tax federal lands “by ordinance irrevocable without the consent of the United States.” E. g., Act of July 16, 1894, § 3, 28 Stat. 108 (Utah). Congress also imposed upon the State a binding and perpetual obligation to use the granted lands for the support of public education. All revenue from the sale or lease of the school grants was impressed with a *524trust in favor of the public schools. No State could divert school lands to other public uses without compensating the trust for the full market value of the interest taken. Lassen v. Arizona ex rel. Arizona Highway Dept., 385 U. S. 458 (1967); see Alamo Land & Cattle Co. v. Arizona, 424 U.S. 295 (1976).
A long line of statutes dating from the early 1800’s evidences Congress’ consistent respect for the federal obligation to replace unavailable school sections with indemnity lands of equal acreage. See United States v. Morrison, supra, at 201-202. In 1826, the first general indemnity selection statute appropriated additional tracts to compensate the States for lands lost when fractional townships were found not to contain the numbered section originally granted. The statute directed the Secretary of the Treasury to select “out of any unappropriated public land” within the township where the section had been lost the “quantity” of land to which the State was entitled. Act of May 20, 1826, ch. 83, 4 Stat. 179. When private claims against unsurveyed public lands increased as the Nation moved west, Congress also acted to indemnify States for school sections occupied by settlers. The earliest statutes authorized officials in particular States or Territories to select “other lands to an equal amount ... in lieu of [the] sections so occupied. . . .” E. g., Act of Mar. 2, 1853, § 20, 10 Stat. 179 (Washington Territory).6
In 1859, a second statute of general applicability appropriated “other lands of like quantity” to replace school sections pre-empted by prior settlement, “fractional in quantity,” missing from a township, or lost “from any natural cause whatever.” Act of Feb. 26, 1859, ch. 58, 11 Stat. 385. Although the statute incorporated by reference the selection provisions of the 1826 Act, a more particular statute passed on the same day expressly empowered local officials in one western *525county to make their own indemnity selection. Upon filing with the local federal register, the statute declared, “the land so selected shall . . . belong to the school fund ... in all respects the same as other school lands. . . Act of Feb. 26, 1859, ch. 59, 11 Stat. 385 (Sarpy County, Neb.).
The general statutes of 1826 and 1859, consolidated and codified as §§ 2275 and 2276 in the Revised Statutes of 1874, underwent extensive revision in 1891. The resulting law appropriated additional land to replace school sections lost because they were mineral in character, included within a federal reservation, or “otherwise disposed of by the United States.” In lieu of unavailable school sections, each State was entitled to such “other lands of equal acreage . . . [as] may be selected by said State. . . .” Act of Feb. 28, 1891, ch. 384, 26 Stat. 796. The States could make their indemnity selections from “any unappropriated, surveyed public lands, not mineral in character, within the State. . . .” Id., at 797.
The 1891 revision had at least four effects. First, it reaffirmed the States’ unquestioned right to replace lost school sections with lands of equal acreage. Second, it removed the restriction that had limited indemnity selections to land within the township where the school section was unavailable. Third, it appeared to confirm this Court’s earlier decision that school grants did not convey mineral lands to the States.7 Fourth, it expressly conformed the general indemnity selection statutes to the mid-19th-century enactments that gave certain States the right to make their own indemnity selections. Even where the earlier statutes gave a State the power of selection, however, it had become accepted practice for the State to submit its selections for the approval of the Secretary of the Interior.8 State Enabling Acts passed in 1889 *526and 1890 sanctioned the practice explicitly.9 The 1891 revision of the general indemnity selection laws did not mention the need for federal approval, but the inclusion of an approval requirement in the Utah Enabling Act passed three years later suggests that the revision authorized no departure from the accepted practice. See Act of July 16, 1894, § 6, 28 Stat. 109.
By the end of the 19th century, the States’ right to select land of equal acreage in lieu of lost school sections had been established for nearly 100 years. The only unsettled question was whether the Secretary of the Interior had discretion to disapprove the selections. In Payne v. New Mexico, 255 U. S. 367 (1921), this Court resolved that question in the States’ favor. New Mexico had selected alternative land in exchange for school sections lying within a national forest. Before the Secretary approved the selection, the grants in place were restored to the public domain. The Secretary found that the restoration of the grants in place defeated the basis for the exchange selection. The Court held, however, that equitable title to properly selected land vested in the State when the selection was filed. If the selection satisfied the requirement of the general school grant statutes, the Secretary had no power to annul the State’s title. Id., at 370-371.
Three weeks later, the Court made the same point even more emphatically in Wyoming v. United States, 255 U. S. 489 (1921). In that case, the land selected by Wyoming in exchange for a school section lying within a national forest later was withdrawn by the Federal Government “as possible oil land.” Id., at 495. The Court again concluded that equitable title to the chosen land vested in the State on the date the selection was filed. It was not, the Court said,
“as if the selection was merely a' proposal by the State *527which the [federal] land officers could accept or reject. They had no such option to exercise. .. . The power confided to them was not that of granting or denying a privilege to the State, but of determining whether an existing privilege conferred by Congress had been lawfully exercised. . . .” Id., at 496.
In the years after Payne and Wyoming, Congress further expanded the States’ rights to land for the support of public education. A 1927 statute declared that school giants were “to embrace numbered school sections mineral in character. . . .” Act of Jan. 25, 1927, § 1, 44 Stat., pt. 2, p, 1026. A 1958 amendment to the indemnity selection statutes, by then found in their present places as 43 U. S. C. §§ 851, 852, permitted States to select mineral lands as indemnity for lost school sections that were mineral in character. Act of Aug. 27, 1958, 72 Stat. 928. This provision reflected a congressional judgment that the ban on mineral land indemnity for lost mineral lands had denied the States the fair cross section of land values contemplated by the orginal numbered grants.10 Congress also found that a rule which kept the States from replacing nonmineral land with mineral land “amply protected” the federal interest in preventing a windfall to the States. Congress therefore declined to depart from the fundamental equal acreage principle accepted since 1802. H. R. Rep. No. 2347, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 2, 3-4 (1958). Indeed, Congress always has adhered to the equal acreage principle as its standard for just indemnification. As recently as 1966, when it amended 43 U. S. C. § 852 to allow indemnity selections from unsurveyed as well as surveyed public land, Congress rejected the Secretary of the Interior’s proposal to import an “equal value concept” into the indemnity statutes. *528See Act of June 24, 1966, Pub. L. 89-470, 80 Stat. 220; S. Rep. No. 1213, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 2, 4r-5 (1966).11
II
The Utah Enabling Act of 1894 grants to the State four numbered sections within each township for the support of public education. If those sections “have been sold or otherwise disposed of” by the Federal Government, the Act— like other statutes of its kind' — directs school grant indemnity lands “to be selected within said State in such manner as the legislature may provide, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior. . . Act of July 16, 1894, § 6, 28 Stat. 109. In accordance with this direction, Utah has selected 194 tracts of mineral land as indemnity for lost school sections said to be mineral in character. Utah alleges that the tracts selected are unappropriated public land equal in acreage to the unavailable sections. Thus, the tracts appear to satisfy the basic indemnity selection requirements of 43 U. S. C. §§ 851, 852.
The Secretary, however, has refused to determine whether the selections satisfy the indemnity statutes. Instead, he claims that the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, as amended, 43 U. S. C. § 315 et seg., gives him discretion to disapprove the selection of indemnity lands “where the value of those lands greatly exceeds the value of the lost school lands for which the State seeks indemnity.” App. 61. The Court today agrees. In an unprecedented departure, the Court concludes that Congress intended the Taylor Grazing Act to abrogate the equal acreage principle that Congress has reaffirmed repeatedly since 1802. The conclusion is implausible on its face, and the Taylor Grazing Act belies it. A full review of the Act's history and structure shows that this land management legisla*529tion affects only the States’ right to make land exchanges. Indeed, the language of the Act — analyzed more closely in Part III of this opinion — expressly protects the States’ indemnity selection rights from any impairment whatever.
The Taylor Grazing Act was intended to protect the public lands from spoliation while providing for the orderly satisfaction of valid claims against them. By the mid-1930’s, the public ranges in the Western States were seriously endangered. Overgrazing had destroyed the better grasses, erosion had bared the steep hillsides, and silt had filled the waterholes. Homesteading on the better watered grounds aggravated the situation by leaving other lands without access to water. Finally, the disastrous decline of livestock prices during the Great Depression drove stockmen to make even greater use of free grazing on the already depleted public domain.12 It was against this background that Congress in 1934 enacted the Taylor Grazing Act “to promote the highest use of the public lands pending its final disposal. ...” § 1, 48 Stat. 1269.
Section 1 of the Act authorized the Secretary of the Interior “in his discretion, ... to establish grazing districts ... of vacant, unappropriated, and unreserved lands from any part of the public domain . . . , which in his opinion are chiefly valuable for grazing and raising forage crops. . . .” Ibid.13 Land noticed for inclusion within a grazing district was withdrawn from “all forms of entry [or] settlement” until hearings could be conducted. Id., at 1270. Congress carefully provided, however, that the Act was not to impede orderly disposition of the public lands. When some States objected *530to an earlier draft of the Act “upon the theory that the establishment of a grazing district would restrict [a] State in its indemnity selections,” Congress recast § 1 to declare expressly that
“[n]othing in this Act shall be construed in any way to diminish, restrict, or impair any right which has been heretofore or may be hereafter initiated under existing law validly affecting the public lands . . . except as otherwise expressly provided in this Act, nor to affect any land heretofore or hereafter surveyed which, except for the provisions of this Act, would be a part of any grant to any State. . . ” Id., at 1269.14
*531Section 7 also gave the Secretary discretion to reclassify land within a grazing district as “more valuable and suitable for the production of agricultural crops than native grasses 'and forage plants. . . .'' Id., at 1272. Upon reclassification, such land again became “subject to settlement or occupation as homesteads. . . .” Ibid.
The Act contained critically important provisions for land exchanges. Section 8 authorized the Secretary to accept private and state land within a grazing district in exchange for any surveyed public land of no more than “equal value/' Id., at 1272-1273. The section showed special solicitude for the States by directing the Secretary to proceed with state-initiated exchanges “at the earliest practicable date, and to cooperate fully with the State to that end. . . .” Id., at 1273. The Western States, however, objected to the discretionary exchange provisions. The Governor of Wyoming, for example, opposed the Act because he feared that § 8 would impair the State's right to exchange school sections isolated inside a federal reservation or a grazing district for other, better situated acreage. In testimony before the Senate Committee, he argued that the Secretary might not allow enough exchanges to permit the removal of state land from inside federally administered areas. The Governor therefore urged that the Act’s exchange provisions should be mandatory.15 Testimony given by the Executive Secretary of the Utah Land Board expressed the same concerns.16 The State Land Commissioner of Arizona also suggested that the Act would prevent private citizens from exercising their legitimate rights *532against lands included in a grazing district.17 Although the Secretary argues that these witnesses opposed the Act because it impaired the States’ right to make indemnity selections, nothing in their testimony supports that conclusion. Indeed, the testimony of all three witnesses is most remarkable for its failure to suggest that they thought the Taylor Grazing Act would interfere with school grant indemnity selections by the Western States.
Five months after the Act went into effect, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 6910 (1934)., Invoking his authority under the Pickett Act of 1910,18 the President withdrew all unreserved and unappropriated public lands in 12 Western States “from settlement, location, sale or entry . . . pending determination of the most useful purpose to which such land may be put. . . .” The effect of this Pickett Act withdrawal was far-reaching. Although homesteading and other activities continued under existing claims, new entries upon the public domain came to a halt. See 55 I. D. 205 (1935). The withdrawal also forestalled States and private citizens from exercising their exchange, scrip, or indemnity rights to appropriate public land. See State of Arizona, 55 I. D. 249, 253-254 (1935).19
*533Only months after the Order issued, the Senators from Arizona began hearings on a proposal to undercut the withdrawal by broadening the Secretary’s powers under §§ 7 and 8 of the Taylor Grazing Act.20 The bill suffered a pocket veto, but an almost identical bill became law in 1936. Act of June 26, 1936, Title I, 49 Stat. 1976. In the meantime, Executive Order No. 7274 (1936) excluded from the operation of the earlier Order “all lands which are now, or may hereafter be, included within grazing districts. . . .” Thus, by the time the bill was enacted, the Pickett Act withdrawal had no further effect on lands administered under the Taylor Grazing Act.21
The 1936 enactment significantly amended §§ 7 and 8 of the Taylor Grazing Act. The amendment to § 7 authorized the Secretary of the Interior to classify lands withdrawn by Executive Order No. 6910 or “within a grazing district” as “more valuable or suitable” for uses other than grazing or as “proper for acquisition in satisfaction of any outstanding lieu, exchange or script [sic] rights or land grant. . . .” 49 Stat. 1976.22 Such land would be open “to entry, selection, or *534location” under the applicable public land laws. The statute directed the Secretary to respond to an application for entry by classifying the subject land, but no lands were to be appropriated “until after the same have been classified and opened to entry. . . .” Ibid.
The amendment to § 8 made mandatory the Taylor Grazing Act’s provisions for the exchange of state-owned land.23 Upon the receipt of any State’s application for an exchange, the statute now provided, the Secretary “shall, and is hereby, directed to proceed with such exchange at the earliest practicable date and to cooperate fully with the State to that end. . . .” Id., at 1977. Furthermore, the Secretary was authorized to make exceptions to the equal value requirement that remained applicable to exchanges of private land. The federal land exchanged for state land could be “either of equal value or of equal acreage.” Ibid.
Ill
Two specific provisions of the Taylor Grazing Act are critical to the Court’s resolution of this case. The Court first must demonstrate that § 1 of the Act, 43 U. S. C. § 315, does not exclude the State’s school grant indemnity rights from the reach of the statute. The Court then must establish that § 7 of the Act, 43 U. S. C. § 315f, gives the Secretary of the Interior power to disapprove the selection of lands that satisfy *535all requirements of the school grant indemnity statutes, 43 U. S. C. §§ 851, 852. The Court fails to clear either hurdle because neither section of the Act permits the construction that the Court would give it. The plain language of § 1 protects school grant indemnity rights from the operation of the statute. And even if the Act applied to school grants, § 7 would not give the Secretary discretion to reject otherwise proper indemnity selections.
A
Section 1 of the Taylor Grazing Act provides that nothing in the statute shall “affect any land . . . which [otherwise] would be a part of any grant to any State. . . .” The exemption is transparently clear. All grants made by the compacts between the States and the Federal Government are completely unaffected by the Taylor Grazing Act. Thus, the establishment of a grazing district is not a federal “reservation” or “disposition” of land that can prevent title to numbered school sections from vesting in the States. See 43 U. S. C. § 851. Furthermore, designated grazing land remains “unappropriated” and available for the satisfaction of school grants under the terms of the indemnity statutes. See 43 U. S. C. §§ 852 (a) and (d). The purpose of the Act is simply to provide that unsurveyed or unselected school land, like other public land, can be included in grazing districts “[i]n order to promote [its] highest use . . . pending its final disposal.” 43 U. S. C. § 315.
The Court gives the unqualified exemption in § 1 a construction that is inconsistent with its plain language and the stated purpose of the Act. The Court concedes that the inclusion of numbered school sections within a grazing district is not a federal disposition of the land that can defeat the grants in place. Ante, at 513.24 It holds, however, that the *536inclusion of other lands within a grazing district is a federal appropriation that can defeat a State’s otherwise clear right to replace lost school sections with lands of equal acreage. Ante, at 519. Thus, the Court thinks the Taylor Grazing Act does “affect . . . land . . . which [otherwise] would be . . . part of” a grant to a State. Indeed, the Court concludes that the Act gives the Secretary of the Interior power to nullify an earlier congressional “disposal” of public land. This construction is wholly at odds with the express language and the clear history of the Act.
B
Even if I could agree with the Court that § 1 of the Taylor Grazing Act exempts only numbered school sections from the operation of the Act, I could not agree with the Court’s unexplained conclusion that § 7 allows the Secretary of the Interior to review school grant indemnity selections under a comparative value standard. Section 7 of the Act, 43 U. S. C. § 315f, gives the Secretary discretion to reclassify designated grazing lands as
“[i] more valuable or suitable for the production of agricultural crops than for the production of native grasses and forage plants, or [ii] more valuable or suitable for any other use than for [grazing], or [iii] proper *537for acquisition in satisfaction of any outstanding lieu, exchange or script [sic] rights or land grant, and to open such lands to entry, selection, or location for disposal in accordance with such classification under applicable public-land laws. . .
The Courts of Appeals have concluded that this section gives the Secretary substantial discretion to conserve the public lands. Thus, the Secretary may reject private applications for land that he finds suitable for more efficient uses. See Bleamaster v. Morton, 448 F. 2d 1289 (CA9 1971); Carl v. Udall, 114 U. S. App. D. C. 33, 37-38, 309 F. 2d 653, 657-658 (1962). The courts also have upheld administrative determinations that certain land is not proper for private acquisition because the relevant land grant did not convey lands of that character. See Pallin v. United States, 496 F. 2d 27, 34-35 (CA9 1974); Finch v. United States, 387 F. 2d 13, 15-16 (CA10 1967), cert. denied, 390 U. S. 1012 (1968). But these federal courts agree that § 7 of the Taylor Grazing Act does not give the Secretary authority to review a land selection under standards fundamentally inconsistent with the terms of the relevant land grant statutes. See Pallin v. United States, supra; Bronken v. Morton, 473 F. 2d 790, 795-796 (CA9), cert. denied, 414 U. S. 828 (1973); Finch v. United States, supra. The word “proper” in the third clause of § 7 quoted above cannot mean proper under whatever criteria the Secretary sees fit to devise.
Nothing in this general provision, concerned with the satisfaction of private as well as state claims, suggests that Congress intended to authorize a comparative value standard at odds with the equal acreage principle found in every school grant indemnity statute since the beginning of the 19th century. When a specific statute grants fixed acreages, the Secretary cannot defeat the grant by applying a comparative value test based on the general provisions of § 7. Bronken v. Morton, supra. This rule should apply with special force where the *538Federal Government has granted fixed quantities of land to a State as part of the bilateral compact under which the State was admitted to the Union. Even the exchange provisions in § 8 of the Taylor Grazing Act acknowledged the equal acreage principle. The section allowed the Secretary to accept private lands only in return for public lands of no more than “equal value,” 43 U. S. C. § 315g (b) (1970 ed.), but it authorized him to take state-owned lands in exchange for “land either of equal value or of equal acreage,” §315g(c). Having expressly acknowledged the equal acreage principle in a section dealing with the exchange of lands to which the States already hold title, the Act could not silently have authorized departures from that principle in a section dealing with indemnity for deficiencies in the original land grants.
The Congress that passed the indemnity provision under which Utah has made its selections found that a law permitting the selection of mineral lands as indemnity for other mineral lands of equal acreage “amply protected” the federal interest. H. R. Rep. No. 2347, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1958). The sponsors of the legislation and the Department of the Interior did not conclude — as the Court does — that such selections would allow the States to secure an unfair advantage. Instead, they agreed that the selection of mineral lands on an equal acreage basis was necessary to guarantee the public schools a “fair cross section of land values.” Id., at 4 (report of the Department of the Interior); 104 Cong. Rec. 11921 (1958) (remarks of Sen. Watkins); see supra, at 527. No later Congress has receded from this view, despite the Secretary’s invitation to do so. See S. Rep. No. 1213, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 2, 4 (1966); supra, at 527-528. For nearly 180 years, Congress has adhered to the equal acreage principle embodied in the specific statutes most relevant to this case. The Court has no basis for surmising that a general statute addressed to different issues has given the Secretary authority to adopt an inconsistent position.
*539IV
Utah has selected land in satisfaction of grants made to support the public education of its citizens. Those grants are part of the bilateral compact under which Utah was admitted to the Union. They guarantee the State a specific quantity of the public lands within its borders. Payne v. New Mexico, 255 U. S. 367 (1921), and Wyoming v. United States, 255 U. S. 489 (1921), require the Secretary of the Interior to approve Utah’s indemnity selections if they designate tracts equal in acreage to the lands replaced and otherwise satisfy the requirements of 43 U. S. C. §§851, 852. Nothing in the Taylor Grazing Act empowers the Secretary to review Utah’s selections under a comparative value standard explicitly at odds with principles consistently respected since the early days of our Republic.
For a decade or longer, however, the Secretary has refused to determine whether Utah’s selections satisfy §§ 851 and 852. Indeed, he has refused to make any determination at all. Rather, the Secretary has claimed that the Taylor Grazing Act gives him discretion to disapprove the selection of indemnity lands more valuable than Utah’s lost school sections. In the five years since Utah took issue with that claim, the registry of the District Court has swollen with the proceeds of oil shale leases on the selected land — proceeds which the Federal Government now claims on the ground that the Secretary has not approved the indemnity selections. The District Court brought this matter to a just conclusion. It ordered the Secretary to do his duty. The Court of Appeals affirmed, and I would affirm its judgment.

 Congress did not address this problem in 1796 when Tennessee was created from land that North Carolina had ceded to the Confederation. Consequently, Tennessee contested congressional control over all vacant land within the State. The controversy ended with a compromise that established a federal reservation exempt from state taxation. Act of Apr. 18, 1806, ch. 31, §§ 1, 2, 2 Stat. 381-382; see P. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development 287-288 (1968).

 The Land Ordinance of 1785 “reserved the lot No. 16, of every township, for the maintenance of public schools within the said township. ...” 1 Laws of the United States 565 (1815).

 Article III of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 declared: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” 1 Stat. 52. Article IV provided that legislatures established in the region could not “fax . . . the property of the United States” or interfere with the Federal Government’s disposal of the public lands. Ibid.

 The pattern established by the Ohio Enabling Acts, Act of Mar. 3, 1803, 2 Stat. 225; Act of Apr. 30, 1802, § 7, 2 Stat. 175, was followed in *523the Acts organizing every State except Maine, Texas, West Virginia, and Hawaii. See P. Gates, supra n. 1, at 285-339.

 Until shortly after Congress stopped selling public land on credit, Act of Apr. 24, 1820, § 2, 3 Stat. 566, State Enabling Acts also exempted land sold by Congress from state taxation for a period of five years after the sale. The Acts enabling the organization of Ohio and other States in the Northwest Territory contained only this proscription because the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 already banned state taxes on federal lands. See P. Gates, supra n. 1, at 288-296; n. 3, supra.

 See Act of Mar. 3, 1853, § 7, 10 Stat. 247 (California); Act of Jan. 7, 1853, ch. 6, 10 Stat. 150 (Oregon).

 Mining Co. v. Consolidated Mining Co., 102 U. S. 167 (1880); see United States v. Sweet, 245 U. S. 563, 570-572 (1918).

 See Todd v. Washington, 24 L. D. 106 (1897). The Secretary of the Interior assumed the Secretary of the Treasury’s responsibility for the public lands in 1849. Act of Mar. 3, 1849, § 3, 9 Stat. 395.

 See Act of July 10, 1890, § 4, 26 Stat. 223 (Wyoming); Act of July 3, 1890, § 4, 26 Stat. 215 (Idaho); Act of Feb. 22, 1889, § 10, 25 Stat. 679 (North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington).

 See 104 Cong. Rec. 11921 (1958) (remarks of Sen. Watkins of Utah, cosponsor of the bill).

 The Court points to nothing in nearly two centuries of American history to support its statement that the Secretary’s comparative value concept is “wholly faithful to Congress’ consistent purpose in providing for indemnity selections, to give the States a rough equivalent of the. school grants in place that were lost. . . .” Ante, at 520.

 See generally P. Gates, supra n. 1, at 519-529, 607-613.

 The Taylor Grazing Act further provided that the land included within grazing districts could not aggregate more than 80 million acres. § 1, 48 Stat. 1269. The acreage limitation rose to 142 million acres in 1936, Act of June 26, 1936, Title I, § 1, 49 Stat. 1976, and it disappeared entirely in 1954, Act of May 28, 1954, §2, 68 Stat. 151.

 The last part of the provision was added to the statute by the House Committee on the Public Lands. See Hearings on H. R. 2835 and H. R. 6462 before the House Committee on the Public Lands, 73d Cong., 1st Sess. and 2d Sess., 195 (1934). At the time the language was inserted, the Committee had before it a report from the Secretary of the Interior indicating that some States had objected to the bill “upon the theory that the establishment of a grazing district would restrict the State in its indemnity selections.” Id., at 5 (memorandum from General Land Office Commissioner Johnson to Secretary Ickes); see H. R. Rep. No. 903, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 9 (1934); S. Rep. No. 1182, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 7 (1934). The Senate further expanded the exemption. See 78 Cong. Ree. 11147 (1934); Hearings on H. R. 6462 before the Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 64 (1934). The House conferees acceded to the Senate amendment, after inserting the phrase “validly affecting the public lands” behind the words “existing law.” See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 2050, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 1, 4 (1934).
The Court simply ignores this highly relevant sequence of events. It even cites the Secretary’s report on the States’ concern for the plainly erroneous proposition that the original Act made “no provision ... for the States’ indemnity selections from land within grazing districts. . . .” Ante, at 517. Perhaps the Court’s confusion arises from its assumption that the broad saving provision covers only lands specifically granted, rather than all lands needed for satisfaction of a grant. Ante, at 519, n. 24. This assumption is logically untenable. Lands selected in lieu of deficiencies in a grant cannot be conveyed to the grantee unless they become “part of [the] grant.” 48 Stat. 1269.

 Hearings on H. R. 6462 before the Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 195-209 (1934) (testimony of Gov. Miller of Wyo.).

 Id., at 209-216 (testimony of George Fisher). Not until Congress amended the Taylor Grazing Act in 1936 was the Secretary of the Interior required to effect exchanges of state-owned lands. See infra, at 534.

 Hearings on H. R. 6462, supra, at 161-174 (testimony of Howland J. Smith).

 The Pickett Act of 1910, ch. 421, 36 Stat. 847, authorized the President temporarily to “withdraw from settlement, location, sale, or entry any of the public lands of the United States . . . , and reserve the same for water-power sites, irrigation, classification of lands, or other public purposes. . . The Act was repealed by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, § 704 (a), 90 Stat. 2792.

 This Court later held that a Pickett Act withdrawal is a “previous disposition” of land by the Federal Government that prevents title to numbered school sections from vesting in the States upon completion of a survey. United States v. Wyoming, 331 U. S. 440, 443-444, 454 (1947). Executive Order No. 7599, 2 Fed. Reg. 633 (1937), however, expressly exempted numbered school sections from the operation of Executive Order No. 6910.

 See Hearings on S. 2539 before the Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., 1-2 (1935). See also S. Rep. No. 1005, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1935).
Five days after the hearings began, the President limited his earlier withdrawal by amending Executive Order No. 6910 to authorize exchanges of land under § 8 of the Taylor Grazing Act. Exec. Order No. 7048 (1935). Participants in the congressional hearings accurately observed, however, that Executive Order No. 6910 had left no land available for school grant indemnity selection. See ante, at 518-519, n. 23; supra, at 532.

 The Court scarcely mentions Executive Order No. 7274. It therefore fails to recognize that the land within a grazing district is “locked up” only to the extent that the Taylor Grazing Act affirmatively precludes otherwise legitimate claims against it. See ante, at 519. Any implication that the Pickett Act continues to affect lands within a grazing district is simply mistaken. See ante, at 515-516, n. 20; n. 24, infra.

 The Senate Report on this amendment says that it was intended “to provide a more practicable and satisfactory method of classification of *534lands within a grazing district and to make available for private entry lands which are more valuable for other purposes than grazing.” S. Rep. No. 2371, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1936) (emphasis added). The legislative history provides no support for the Court’s inference that the amendment was a response to complaints about the effect of the Taylor Grazing Act — as distinguished from Executive Order No. 6910 — upon state indemnity selections. See ante, at 517-518, 519, n. 24.

 See S. Rep. No. 2371, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1936). Mandatory exchanges were critically important to the Western States. See supra, at 531-532.

 Given the Court’s concession on this point, its reliance on United States v. Wyoming, 331 U. S. 440 (1947), is misplaced. Ante, at 515, n. 20; *536see supra, at 533, and n. 21. In that case, the United States sought to quiet title to oil land lying within one of the State’s numbered school sections. The land had been withdrawn under the Pickett Act of 1910, ch. 421, 36 Stat. 847, several months before a survey identified it as a school section. The Court held that the Pickett Act withdrawal was a “previous disposition” by the Federal Government that prevented title to the school section from vesting in the State upon completion of the survey. 331 U. S., at 433-444, 454. Since the Taylor Grazing Act — unlike the Pickett Act — does not “dispose” of otherwise unreserved public lands, United States v. Wyoming provides no support for the notion that the Act withdrew grazing lands from indemnity selection under the provisions of the State Enabling Acts and the school indemnity statutes.