Court Opinion

ID: 9842018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:12:23.562887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:03.549029
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Mr. Justice Powell joins, concurring in the judgment and concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the judgment of the Court and join in all but Parts II-D, and III of its opinion. As the Court states, it appears that licenses issued to appellees’ ships under the federal licensing statute, 46 U. S. C. § 263, confer upon their grantees an affirmative right to engage in fishing activities in the coastal waters of the United States on the same terms as any other fishermen. I also agree that the federal statute pre-empts similar state licensing legislation which would allow some to engage in the fishery while absolutely excluding any federal licensees. This, I believe, is as much as need be said to decide the case before us. Rather than stopping there, however, the Court embroiders upon this holding a patchwork of broader language whose purpose is almost as uncertain as its long-run effect.
The Court’s treatment of the States’ interests in their coastal fisheries appears to me to cut a somewhat broader swath than is justifiable in this context. True enough, the States do not “own” free-swimming creatures within their territorial limits in any conventional sense of that term, Missouri v. Holland, 252 U. S. 416, 434 (1920); Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. 175 (N. Y. 1805). It is therefore no answer to an assertion of federal pre-emptive power that such action amounts to an unconstitutional appropriation of state property. But it is also clear that the States have a substantial proprietary interest — sometimes described as “common ownership,” Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U. S. 519, 529 (1896) — in *288the fish and game within their boundaries. This is worthy of mention not because it is inconsistent with anything contained in the Court’s opinion, but because I am not sure that the States’ substantial regulatory interests are given adequate shrift by a single sentence casting the issue of state regulation as “simply whether the State has exercised its police power in conformity with the federal laws and Constitution.” Ante, at 284-285.
The precedents of this Court, none of which are disputed today, have upheld a variety of regulations designed to conserve and maintain the collective natural resources of the State. Huron Portland Cement Co. v. Detroit, 362 U. S. 440 (1960); Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 138 (1914); Geer v. Connecticut, supra; Manchester v. Massachusetts, 139 U. S. 240 (1891); McCready v. Virginia, 94 U. S. 391 (1877); Smith v. Maryland, 18 How. 71 (1855); see Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 334 U. S. 410, 420-421 (1948). The exact bases for these decisions vary, but the cases are consistent in recognizing that the retained interests of States in such common resources as fish and game are of substantial legal moment, whether or not they rise to the level of a traditional property right. The range of regulations which a State may invoke under these circumstances is extremely broad. Neither mere displeasure with the asymmetry of the pattern of state regulation, nor a sensed tension with a federal statute will suffice to override a state enactment affecting exploitation of such a resource. Barring constitutional infirmities, only a direct conflict with the operation of federal law — such as exists here — will bar the state regulatory action. See Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430 U. S. 519 (1977); Florida Lime & Avocado Growers v. Paul, 373 U. S. 132, 142 (1963). This is true no matter how “peripatetic” the objects of the regulation or however “Balkanized” the resulting pattern of commercial activity. Ante, at 285-287.
Also, I think the Court has decided more than it properly *289can in its reading of the Submerged Lands Act. While recognizing the Act as effecting a conveyance to the States of primary ownership and control of both “the lands beneath the oceans and natural resources in the waters within state territorial jurisdiction,” ante, at 283-284, the Court makes more than can be justified of the statute's clause reserving federal control for “purposes of commerce, navigation, national defense, and international affairs.” 43 U. S. C. § 1314 (a). It concludes on the basis of this reservation clause that since the enrollment and licensing statute was enacted under the commerce power, the Submerged Lands Act cannot have altered its pre-emptive effect.
I agree that the Submerged Lands Act does not countermand the pre-emption worked by the federal licensing legislation, but this is not because that legislation was enacted pursuant to one of the four categories of constitutional powers explicitly reserved to the Federal Government in the Act. It seems to me a difficult issue, not to be decided in a single sentence, whether the States take only a statutory title and right of control subject to those encumbrances previously created by exercise of the commerce, navigation, national defense, and international affairs powers. An alternative reading would be that the reservation-of-powers clause only gives fair warning of the possibility that the Government may, at some future time and in furtherance of these specified powers, find it necessary to intrude upon state ownership and management of the coastal submerged lands and natural resources. Such a view would take the statute for what it appears to be on its face — a quitclaim of the entire interest held by the Government when the Act was enacted — rather than a transfer of that interest subject to regulatory enactments previously passed under one of the four powers.
Interpretation of this reservation clause seems unnecessary to me at this time because the primary grant of the Act does not extend to any interest over free-swimming fish. The *290title of the statutory section, as originally enacted and as codified, is “Lands Beneath Navigable Waters Within State Boundaries.” 67 Stat. 30, 43 U. S. C., c. 29, subch. II. From this and from its language, the statute appears primarily to be a transfer of all property interest in land and natural resources within the three-mile limit. See United States v. Alaska, 422 U. S. 184, 187 (1975). Section 1311 (a)(1) conveys “title” and “ownership” — to such land and resources and for that reason could not reasonably refer to free-swimming fish which are incapable of such ownership. Section 1311 (a)(2) confers right of administration and control, and identifies the object of the conveyance again as the land and natural resources. Unless the Federal Government had an exclusive power of administration and control over fish — and the background of the legislation does not suggest that it did, see United States v. California, 332 U. S. 19, 36 (1947); Skiriotes v. Florida, 313 U. S. 69, 74-75 (1941) — then the §1311 (a)(2) transfer of the power of administration did not, in fact, alter the pre-existing powers of the States over fish at all, even assuming that it purported to encompass “natural resources” beyond those as to which title was transferred in § 1311 (a) (1). Such legislation which neither affects the actual regulatory powers of the States, nor is explicit in stating that preexisting federal regulatory measures are repealed, lacks the indicia of intent that would justify finding an implied repeal of federal legislation licensing the taking of fish in the coastal area. This is true quite apart from the reservation of powers in § 1314. I would limit our holding accordingly.