Court Opinion

ID: 9446439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:53:57.064681+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:38.619719
License: Public Domain

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
The Mineral Leasing Act provided1 that “the person first making application for the lease who is qualified to hold a lease under this Act shall be entitled” to the lease. It further provided 2 that no person shall hold at one time oil or gas-leases under the statute exceeding fifteen thousand three hundred and sixty acres 3 in any one State. The Mineral Leasing Act for Acquired Lands authorized the-Secretary of the Interior to prescribe such regulations as are appropriate to-carry out the purposes of the Act.4 The *785Secretary promulgated a which provided: regulation 5
“ * * * each application for a lease or permit must contain (1) a separate statement of the applicant’s interests, direct and indirect, in leases or permits for similar mineral deposits, or in applications therefor, on federally owned acquired lands in the same State, identifying by serial number the records where such interests may be found * *
Appellee de Armas filed an application on April 2, 1951, which did not conform to the foregoing regulation; it did not list his specific leaseholdings or their serial numbers. The regulation was mandatory and unqualified; it said “must contain”. No action was taken on that application. More than three years later, on August 17, 1954, appellant Mc-Kenna filed an application for the same lease, and his application fully complied with the regulation. Thereafter the Secretary permitted de Armas to amend his application nunc pro tunc so as to supply the required information omitted from his original application. The Secretary then awarded the lease to de Armas.
Appellant McKenna was the first person to file an application in accordance with the regulation and was therefore the first qualified applicant for the lease. The Secretary was in violation of the Act when he awarded the lease to de Armas, who was not the first applicant to qualify under the regulation.
It is my view that the Secretary was bound by his own regulation and had no power to depart from its requirements. Such is the plain holding of the Accardi case,6 in which the Supreme Court held that, when the Attorney General by regulation established a Board of Immigration Appeals, requiring it to exercise its judgment in the consideration of appeals in deportation matters, he himself was bound by the regulation and could not dictate the Board’s decision or announce his intention in respect to a case before the Board had decided it. My position is also supported by the ruling of the Supreme Court in Service v. Dulles.7 The Court there held the discharge of Service to be invalid, on the ground that the discharge violated the regulations of the Department of State, which were binding on the Secretary. In Chapman v. Sheridan-Wyoming Co.8 the Court, speaking of a regulation under the Mineral Leasing Act, said: “That it binds him [the Secretary] as well as others while it is in effect is not doubted.” 9 We considered a somewhat similar problem under this Act in McKay v. Wahlenmaier10 and decided it in accordance with the view which I here indicate.
The Secretary attempts to justify his departure from his outstanding regulation by saying (a) that the Bureau of Land Management, a subordinate bureau in his Department, had, unknown to him, as a matter of administrative practice ignored the outstanding regulation and (b) that equitable considerations which seem to him fair, reasonable and rational require that an applicant deficient under the regulation should be given time to supply details necessary to cure the de-*786feet and to have such amendment retroactive in date. The Assistant Secretary of the Interior who authorized the nunc pro tunc amendment of defective applications said regarding the Bureau’s practice, “Although the practice is not legally justifiable, and acquired land lease applications which do not contain the statement required by 43 CFR 200.5 are defective,” permission to amend should be given.
In my view equitable considerations do not constitute a valid ground for violation of a valid mandatory regulation. No such exception is indicated in Accardi or in Service. Fair, reasonable and rational considerations apply to discretion absent a regulation; they cannot supersede an unequivocal regulation validly prescribing the terms of a valid application. Particularly, it seems to me, is no such exception permitted where the circumstance which gives rise to the equitable considerations is a practice admittedly not legally justifiable. Moreover, if the ruling is fair, reasonable and rational as to de Armas, what about Mc-Kenna? Is the Secretary to choose, in the face of the regulation, the person in whose favor he is to be fair, reasonable and rational ? In administrative law are we to return to the “Chancellor’s breakfast” theory?
Of course there was a margin of time when amendment might have been granted de Armas by administrative courtesy. By the regulation then in force his application could have been amended and would then have taken the date of the amendment. But that time for effective correction of the defective document expired when McKenna filed his application. The vice in the present ruling is not that it permits amendment but that it permits nunc pro tunc amendment to validate a defective application after rights of another applicant have intervened. The court penalizes the careful, complying applicant and rewards the careless or noncomplying. I think the Congress never intended to grant the Secretary (or his numerous administrative aides) such powers as are inherent in this rule of a fair, reasonable and rational choice of the successful applicant for an oil or gas lease.
It seems to me that the view now taken by the court destroys one of the fundamental principles of administrative rule-making, that is, that Government officers and citizens alike are bound by the terms of a regulation validly adopted and outstanding. These regulations are available to the public, made known by a process prescribed by statute to those who deal with the Government. The rulings of the Supreme Court on the matter are explicit and unmistakable.- Chaos in the administrative law field will result from the practice established in the present case. Everybody will have the right to claim the benefits of the practice. Nobody will be able to abide a validly adopted regulation with certainty. Surely confusion will be among the least of the undesirable results.
The basic problem is the “rule of law”. We have laws — either statutes or rules legally adopted, — and we are supposed to be governed by them. If our governors merely do whatever strikes them as just and fair and reasonable at the moment, we have rule by men instead of by law. These are not cliches. Rule by law alone is the precise essential which differentiates our system from the totalitarian system. If the Secretary of the Interior, despite statutes and duly adopted rules, can award this lease to de Armas, he can award any oil and gas lease according to what he at the moment deems to be fair and just and reasonable. Not law but the will of the Secretary will then govern in respect to the beneficiaries of these great items of national wealth.

. 60 Stat. 951 (1946), as amended, 30 U.S.C.A. § 226.

. 60 Stat. 954 (1946), 62 Stat. 291 (1948),. as amended, 30 U.S.C.A. § 184.

. Increased to forty-six thousand and! eighty acres by an act of Aug. 2, 1954,. 68 Stat. 648.

. 61 Stat. 915 (1947), 30 U.S.C.A. § 359.

. 43 C.F.R. § 200.5 (1949 ed.)

. United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U.S. 260, 74 S.Ct. 499, 98 L.Ed. 681 (1854).

. 354 U.S. 363, 77 S.Ct. 1152, 1 L.Ed.2d 1403 (1957).

. 338 U.S. 621, 629, 70 S.Ct. 392, 94 L.Ed. 393 (1950).

. See also Columbia Broadcasting System v. United States, 316 U.S. 407, 422, 62 S.Ct. 1194, 86 L.Ed. 1563 (1942), where the Court said: “ When, as here, the regulations are avowedly adopted in the exercise of that power, couched in terms of command and accompanied by an announcement of the Commission that the policy is one ‘which we will follow in exercising our licensing power,’ they must be taken by those entitled to rely upon them as what they purport to be — an exercise of the delegated legislative power — ■ which, until amended, are controlling alike upon the Commission and all others whose rights may be affected by the Commission’s execution of them.”

. 96 U.S.App.D.C. 313, 226 F.2d 35 (1955).