Court Opinion

ID: 9427865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:07.777262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:10.130422
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
dissenting.
Everyone agrees that the District Court correctly rejected Idaho’s now-abandoned claim that the Carey Act, as amended, constituted an absolute, present grant of . entitlement to any three million acres of arid lands that the State might designate at some time in the future. But the District Court’s rejection of that claim did not require it to express any opinion on any of the questions that the Court discusses today.
This record does not present the question of what reasons, if any, are necessary or sufficient to justify a denial by the Secretary of a Carey Act application or a petition for reclassification under the Taylor Grazing Act.1 I would therefore express no opinion on that question.
*732Nor is there anything in this record to suggest that there is any imminent likelihood that the Secretary will reserve for other purposes so much of the federal land in Idaho otherwise suitable for Carey Act contracts that less than 2.4 million acres will be available.2 Unless and until such a likelihood appears, there is no need to decide whether he may do so. The fact that in the 85-year life of the Carey Act Idaho has used only about one-fifth of the three million acres authorized makes it rather clear that resolution of that issue is of no immediate consequence to either party.
In short, I do not believe either of the questions on which the Court has volunteered its advice is ripe for decision. I would simply vacate the purely advisory portions of the District Court’s judgment and refrain from deciding any questions not fairly raised by this record.

 Idaho’s complaint prayed simply for a declaration that “the State of Idaho has an absolute right to demand up to three million acres of desert *732lands under the Carey Act and further . . . that the [Secretary of the Interior] . . . has no authority or discretion to deny any request for segregation or withdrawal when presented by the Plaintiff.” App. 6.

 It was suggested by the State at oral argument that perhaps as much as 8.5 million acres is “susceptible of possible irrigation that is still in Federal hands.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 31. To date, Idaho has received approximately 600,000 acres under the Carey Act.