Court Opinion

ID: 9577745
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:37:35.32205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:10.238645
License: Public Domain

Hale, J.
(dissenting) — I dissent for three reasons: (1) Zoning laws, it seems to me, are not encumbrances on land but rather are an exercise of the police power to foster the public welfare, health and safety; (2) although Indian reservations may be partially immune from state regulations, this immunity ought not extend to activities which immediately and directly affect the citizenry at large; and (3) any immunity from the state’s police regulations enjoyed by the Indians for activities on the reservation should not cover their non-Indian lessees or assigns. I believe, therefore, that neither Indians nor their lessees may operate a garbage *675dump on the reservation in violation of the zoning laws of Snohomish County.
As the majority has said, Indians of the Tulalip reservation voluntarily acceded to state jurisdiction for enforcement of the criminal law, thus directly bringing the reservation as a matter of principle within the police power of the state. 28 U.S.C. § 1360; RCW 37.12; State v. Paul, 53 Wn.2d 789, 337 P.2d 33 (1959). The majority opinion, however, sidetracks the right of the state to achieve desirable state ends through a reasonable exercise of its police power and, in excluding the reservation from operation of the zoning regulations, largely ignores state police powers expressed through county regulations. It premises its holding mainly on the idea that the zoning laws of Snohomish County constitute an encumbrance on land under 28 U.S.C. § 1360(b), a statute which says that “Nothing in this section shall authorize the alienation, encumbrance, or taxation of any real or personal property.”
I recognize, of course, that the majority uses the term “encumbrance” in a general sense as indicating any substantial limitation of or condition upon the use of one’s property and not as a word of art, denoting more specifically a covenant, easement, lien, or burden running with the land and attached to the title thereto. The broad general meaning employed by the majority, however, in my opinion, is not called for by the statute. The term “encumbrance” should be given its more definitive and precise meaning — one denoting a burden on the land and affecting the title thereto or one impairing the power of alienation such as a mortgage, lien, easement, lease, or other disability to fee ownership.
Although zoning laws do impair the uses to which one may put his land, from their inception they have not been deemed an encumbrance on real estate. In 1920, the Court of Appeals of New York in Lincoln Trust Co. v. Williams Bldg. Corp., 229 N.Y. 313, 317, 128 N.E. 209 (1920), said of zoning restrictions:
*676' In a great metropolis like New York, in which the public health, welfare, convenience and common good are to be considered, I am of the opinion that the resolution was not an incumbrance, since it was a proper exercise of the police power.
Virtually the same statement was made in Miller v. Milwaukee Odd Fellows Temple, 206 Wis. 547, 240 N.W. 193 (1932). Accord: Hall v. Risley, 188 Ore. 69, 213 P.2d 818 (1950) ; Lohmeyer v. Bower, 170 Kan. 442, 227 P.2d 102 (1951) , the latter case holding expressly that municipal restrictions on the use of land existing at the time a sale of real estate is completed are not encumbrances on land so as to enable the vendee to avoid his contract to purchase on the ground the restrictions rendered his title unmerchantable. Were zoning regulations regarded as encumbrances on land in the legal sense, the courts at their inception would have held them to constitute a taking or damaging of real estate under the state’s power of eminent domain and not simply an expression of the police power.
Although zoning laws, as with other manifestations of the police power, do impair to some degree the untrammelled enjoyment of land, they are, nevertheless, constitutionally sustainable on the universally accepted theory that they represent an expression of the state’s police power. 101 C.J.S. Zoning § 7 (1958); 8 McQuillin, Municipal Corporations § 25.10 (1965).
Thus, they have been regarded judicially as similar to other laws affecting the use of real property, such as codes fixing standards for plumbing, electrical wiring and building, and drainage and sewerage regulations, along with rules governing the disposition and collection of refuse and garbage. All — even though they do in one way or another interfere with the use of property — are constitutionally acceptable as a legitimate means of fostering the general welfare and contributing to the public peace, health, safety and morals under the police power. The courts recognize that conditions of life, work, recreation and leisure are directly affected by the location of manufacturing and *677processing plants, facilities for trade, commerce and finance, the location of parks, playgrounds and highways, freedom from air and water pollution, access to air and sunlight and open spaces and, of course, facilities for the disposition of refuse and garbage.
Hence, I am of the opinion that the right of the Tulalip Indians and their lessees to put a garbage dump on their reservation is not a right running with the land, but rather a privilege to be exercised under the police power in common with all other landowners in the county.
I presume that Indians born in the United States and residing in Washington are citizens of the United States and of the state of Washington. 8 U.S.C. § 1401. Therefore, they assume the same responsibilities as all other citizens, subject to no privileges and immunities not shared equally by all citizens. Thus, while their land within the reservation, because of its exceptional derivation of title, may be free from some of the restrictions which curtail other landowners, the special nature of that ownership does not make an Indian reservation a foreign country, inhabited as it is by citizens of the United States and the state of Washington. We must not lose sight of the fact that the Tulalips are Americans living in Snohomish County, Washington, United States of America.
I see a sensible distinction available in deciding whether the police power of the state extends to the Indian reservation in a particular case. If the action or omissions prohibited by the police power are of the kind which directly injure or endanger the surrounding area and its inhabitants or the state’s citizenry at large, or reasonably appear to do so, then the Indians ought not be permitted to flout the state’s laws enacted to preserve the public peace, health, safety and welfare from the very injuries and dangers which the police regulations were reasonably designed to prevent or curtail. That the Congress recognizes this principle may be inferred from its enactment of 25 U.S.C. § 231 mandating the Secretary of the Interior to allow the states *678to enforce health, sanitation and educational laws on Indian reservations, as follows:
The Secretary of the Interior, under such rules and regulations as he may prescribe, shall permit the agents and employees of any State to enter upon Indian tribal lands, reservations, or allotments therein (1) for the purpose of making inspection of health and educational conditions and enforcing sanitation and quarantine regulations or (2) to enforce the penalties of State compulsory school attendance laws against Indian children, and parents, or other persons in loco parentis except that this subparagraph (2) shall not apply to Indians of any tribe in which a duly constituted governing body exists until such body has adopted a resolution consenting to such application.
Therefore, unless federal legislation directly prohibits the exercise of state jurisdiction, the state, I believe, may and should exercise its police power over Indian reservations as far as may be reasonably necessary to preserve the peace, safety and welfare of its citizens — including, of course, its Indian citizens. 27 Am. Jur. Indians § 48 (1940). A different rule would prevent the state, in the reasonable exercise of the police power, from enforcing on the reservation such laws as are designed to prevent contamination of the state’s waters; control and reduce air pollution, quell riots and public disturbances likely to spread to adjoining areas; quarantine and treat epidemic diseases in imminent danger of spreading throughout the state; suppress loud and protracted noises emanating from the reservation to the disturbance of non-Indians living nearby; enforce compliance with electrical safety codes designed to protect all users of the electrical system; enforce fire control and safety regulations, which, if ignored, may set an entire district of the state ablaze; and capture dangerous criminals.
Therefore, if the state may exercise its sovereign powers to protect its people, including its citizens of Indian extraction, from these innumerable hazards and possesses a jurisdiction over Indian reservations not directly prohibited by federal legislation, it has the power to enforce on the reservation the laws reasonably designed to protect all of its *679citizens, Indian or non-Indian alike, from such hazards and dangers originating on the reservation which directly threaten the peace, repose, welfare and safety of all citizens.
I include zoning regulations among these laws and, therefore, would hold that the Indians of the Tulalip reservation are without legal authority to convert a part of their reservation into a commercial garbage dump unless they proceed in pursuance of and according to the zoning regulations of Snohomish County.
As to the Seattle Disposal Company, I find little basis in Indian law for that company to operate a garbage dump on the reservation in violation of the county zoning laws any more than a lessee of mineral rights on Indian lands was immune from state taxes on gross production. Oklahoma Tax Comm’n v. Texas Co., 336 U.S. 342, 93 L. Ed. 721, 69 Sup. Ct. 561 (1949). Similarly, the transaction of business on an Indian reservation by a non-Indian with non-Indians has been held not exempt from the state’s business and occupation tax. Situs of the transaction on the reservation did not remove the non-Indian entrepreneurs from the state’s taxing powers. Neah Bay Fish Co. v. Krummel, 3 Wn.2d 570, 101 P.2d 600 (1940). Accord: Surplus Trading Co. v. Cook, 281 U.S. 647, 74 L. Ed. 1091, 50 Sup. Ct. 455 (1930).
That the privileges and immunities of reservation Indians are not assignable or negotiable may be seen from the general rule asserted in Association on American Indian Affairs, Federal Indian Law 513 (1966), prepared by the Solicitor General for the Department of the Interior, where it is stated as a general rule that:
[T]he Indian country within a State ordinarily is not regarded as an area of exclusive Federal jurisdiction but is politically and governmentally a part of the State in which State laws apply to the extent that they do not conflict with Federal Indian law.
Federal Indian laws, being protective in nature, were enacted to govern the Indians only; they limit the operation *680of state laws only where “Enactments of the Federal Government passed to protect and guard its Indian wards only affect the operation, within the colony [or reservation], of such state laws as conflict with the federal enactments.” (Italics mine). Federal Indian Law, supra, at 513. I find no federal legislation guarding or protecting a commercial garbage dump as a business on the reservation, and, hence, I am unable to see how the Snohomish County zoning laws can be considered in conflict with federal enactments.
As far as I can determine from the record, the Seattle Disposal Company is a non-Indian entity purposing to engage in a non-Indian and nonfederal activity on a reservation. Being both non-Indian and nonfederal, the company does not, in my opinion, enjoy any of the immunities and privileges which may by federal law have been conferred upon its Indian wards.
I would, therefore, reverse.
Weaver and Hamilton, JJ., concur in the result of the dissent.
June 2,1967. Petition for rehearing denied.