Court Opinion

ID: 9844555
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:04:33.984002+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:37.426531
License: Public Domain

BOYLE, Justice,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority that “[ajbsent a waiver of sovereign immunity by Congress, the United States cannot be sued,” ante at 292 (citing Loeffler v. Frank, 486 U.S. 549, 108 S.Ct. 1965, 100 L.Ed.2d 549 (1988)), and that the conditions of a waiver “must be strictly observed, and exceptions are not to be lightly implied.” Ante at 292 (quoting Block v. North Dakota, 461 U.S. 273, 287, 103 S.Ct. 1811, 1820, 75 L.Ed.2d 840 (1983)). I also agree with the majority that the extent of any waiver must be articulated in the “clear and unambiguous” language of the statute. See ante at 292 (citing Hancock v. Train, 426 U.S. 167, 179, 96 S.Ct. 2006, 2013, 48 L.Ed.2d 555 (1976)). However, in my view, the majority does not correctly apply the United States Supreme Court’s test for determining whether the statutory waiver of sovereign immunity in the instant case is “clear and unambiguous.” As a result, the majority reaches a conclusion which is at odds with the Supreme Court’s recent pronouncements. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
In United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 1011, 117 L.Ed.2d 181 (1992), the most recent pronouncement on the issue of statutory waivers of sovereign immunity, the Supreme Court clarified that its “clear statement” rule has two components. A statutory waiver must be grounded exclusively upon the statutory text (the textual requirement) and the waiver must be “unequivocal” (the unequivocal requirement). See id. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1016 (citing Hoffman v. Connecticut Dept. of Income Maintenance, 492 U.S. 96, 109 S.Ct. 2818, 106 L.Ed.2d 76 (1989) (Eleventh Amendment case) and Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223, 109 S.Ct. 2397, 105 L.Ed.2d 181 (1989) (Eleventh Amendment case)). These two requirements have been developed from an impressive number of recent opinions in both the context of statutory waivers of federal government immunity, see, e.g., Ardestani v. INS, 502 U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 515, 116 L.Ed.2d 496 (1991); Library of Congress v. Shaw, 478 U.S. 310, 106 S.Ct. 2957, 92 L.Ed.2d 250 (1986); United States v. Mitchell, 445 U.S. 535, 100 S.Ct. 1349, 63 L.Ed.2d 607 (1980), and in the context of state sovereign immunity protected by the Eleventh Amendment, see, e.g., Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, 501 U.S. -, *129111 S.Ct. 2578, 115 L.Ed.2d 686 (1991); Hoffman v. Connecticut Dep’t of Income Maintenance, 492 U.S. 96, 109 S.Ct. 2818, 106 L.Ed.2d 76 (1989); Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223, 109 S.Ct. 2397, 105 L.Ed.2d 181 (1989); Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1, 109 S.Ct. 2273, 105 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989), as well as in other contexts, see, e.g., Gregory v. Ashcroft, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 2395, 115 L.Ed.2d 410 (1991); Will v. Michigan Dep’t of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 109 S.Ct. 2304, 105 L.Ed.2d 45 (1989). Although I candidly admire the skillful attempt by the majority opinion to make Nordic Village appear to support its position, it simply does not.
The textual requirement simply means that all evidence of a purported waiver of sovereign immunity must be found exclusively within the statutory text. The Court in Nordic Village defined this requirement from its cases in the Eleventh Amendment context. The Court stated,
Contrary to respondent’s suggestion, legislative history has no bearing on the ambiguity [of a statute]. As in the Eleventh Amendment context, see Hoffman, 492 U.S., at 104, 109 S.Ct., at 2824, the “unequivocal expression” of elimination of sovereign immunity that we insist upon is an expression in statutory text. If clarity does not exist there, it cannot be supplied by a committee report. Cf. Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223, 228-229, 109 S.Ct. 2397, 2400, 105 L.Ed.2d 181 (1989).
Nordic Village, — U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1016 (emphasis added). The Court’s reference to Dellmuth in the above quote is instructive. In the context of the Eleventh Amendment, the Court stated that nontextual arguments were “beside the point.” Dellmuth, 491 U.S. at 230, 109 S.Ct. at 2401. As emphasis, the Court went on:
Our opinion in Atascadero should have left no doubt that we will conclude Congress intended to abrogate sovereign immunity only if its intention is “unmistakably clear in the language of the statute.” [Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 242, 105 S.Ct. 3142, 3147, 87 L.Ed.2d 171 (1985) ]. Lest Atascadero be thought to contain any ambiguity, we reaffirm today that in this area of the law, evidence of congressional intent must be both unequivocal and textual. Respondent’s evidence is neither. In particular, we reject the approach of the Court of Appeals, according to which, “[wjhile the text of the federal legislation must bear evidence of such an intention, the legislative history may still be used as a resource in determining whether Congress’ intention to lift the bar has been made sufficiently manifest.” [Muth v. Central Bucks School Dist.,] 839 F.2d at 128. Legislative history generally will be irrelevant to a judicial inquiry into whether Congress intended to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment. If Congress’ intention is “unmistakably clear in the language of the statute,” recourse to legislative history will be unnecessary; if Congress’ intention is not unmistakably clear, recourse to legislative history will be futile, because by definition the rule of Atascadero will not be met.
Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. at 230, 109 S.Ct. at 2401 (emphasis added). The rule pronounced in Atascadero is the same rule at issue in this instant case, namely, that a waiver of sovereign immunity will only be found by a “clear and unambiguous” statement in the language of the statute. See majority opinion ante at 292. Accordingly, to meet the textual requirement for a waiver under the United States Supreme Court’s clear statement test, the legislative history of a statute, see Nordic Village, — U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1016, the purpose of a statute, see Ardestani, 502 U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 521, and even equitable considerations, see id., are all irrelevant.
Notwithstanding the emphatic admonition by the United States Supreme Court to ignore non-textual evidence, the majority opinion in this instant case concludes that “costs” do not equal “fees” by an appeal to all non-textual sources. The text of the McCarran Amendment nowhere states that the term “fees” is excluded from the definition of “costs.” To reach its conclusion the majority primarily relies on cases from oth*130er jurisdictions. See ante at 295-296. These cases do not purport to construe the term “costs” as it is used in 43 U.S.C. 666(a) and many of these opinions were decided long before the McCarran Amendment was enacted. Id. Where the Supreme Court has so clearly and emphatically limited the search for meaning to the text of the statute, the majority’s attempt to use the definition of costs from other courts and in contexts outside the McCarran Amendment clearly runs afoul of the textual requirement articulated in Nordic Village.
In addition, notwithstanding the majority’s historical background disclaimer, see ante at 296, the majority opinion in this instant case places subtle reliance on a Senate committee report accompanying the passage of McCarran Amendment. See ante at 296-297. As noted above, the United States Supreme Court specifically rejected committee reports as permissible considerations in determining the unequivocal words of a statute. See Nordic Village, — U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1016. Moreover, the majority’s reference to a report of the Western States Water Council, ante at 297, and its references to the filing fees provisions of the various western states at the time the McCarran Amendment was passed, ante at 295, are unacceptable considerations because they are not contained within the textual statutory provisions of the Amendment itself. While these considerations may be helpful in other contexts, the United States Supreme Court has emphatically stated that when interpreting whether Congress has eliminated sovereign immunity, the words contained within a statute are the only considerations that may be considered by a court. Nordic Village, at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1016.
The underlying rationale supporting the exclusion of all nontextual evidence is that the words of the statute alone must provide unequivocal evidence that Congress intended to reject federal sovereign immunity. Paraphrasing what the Court stated in Dellmuth, if Congress’ intention is “unequivocally expressed,” Nordic Village, at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1014 (quoting Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 95, 111 S.Ct. 453, 457, 112 L.Ed.2d 435 (1990)); see also United States v. Mitchell, 445 U.S. 535, 538, 100 S.Ct. 1349, 1351, 63 L.Ed.2d 607 (1980); United States v. King, 395 U.S. 1, 4, 89 S.Ct. 1501, 1502-03, 23 L.Ed.2d 52 (1969), in the words of a statute, then recourse to legislative history or other nontextual evidence of abrogation will be unnecessary; if Congress’ intention is not “unequivocally expressed” in the statute itself, then recourse to nontextual materials will be futile, because by definition the clear statement test for waivers of sovereign immunity will not be met. See Dellmuth, 491 U.S. at 230, 109 S.Ct. at 2401. By considering nontextual material in the instant case the majority fails to adhere to the first requirement of the United States Supreme Court’s test. More importantly, by so doing, the majority opinion fails to recognize that the second requirement of the test, the unequivocal textual waiver requirement, is also not met by the text of the McCarran Amendment.
Under the unequivocal requirement, the United States Supreme Court has erected various rules of construction that weigh heavily against a statutory waiver. The Supreme Court’s test does not merely attempt to give the words of the statute their best meaning. Instead the Court requires a search for an “unequivocal expression” in the language of the statute that leaves no doubt that the specific waiver in question “was affirmatively and separately contemplated by Congress.” Library of Congress v. Shaw, 478 U.S. 310, 315, 106 S.Ct. 2957, 2962, 92 L.Ed.2d 250 (1986).
While the language of the statute is obviously the starting point for its analysis, see Ardestani v. INS, 502 U.S. -, -, 112 S.Ct. 515, 519, 116 L.Ed.2d 496 (1991), the United States Supreme Court has employed various construction techniques which limit a finding of waiver. In Nordic Village, the Supreme Court employed a technique which it borrowed from its Eleventh Amendment cases that may be called the “alternate-interpretation” rule. Under this rule, the existence of any reasonable statutory interpretation that does not entail a *131waiver of sovereign immunity is enough to illustrate that the statute is not an unequivocal expression of a federal waiver. This approach was employed in Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. at 231-32, 109 S.Ct. at 2402, and Hoffman v. Connecticut, 492 U.S. at 100-03, 109 S.Ct. at 2822-23, to ignore what were possibly the best interpretations of the statute, because other alternate interpretations existed.
In Nordic Village the Court used this approach when it entertained various alternate, hypothetical, constructions of the statute at issue. The Court did not suggest that these interpretations were necessarily correct. Rather its point was that because these interpretations were merely plausible, they demonstrated that the statute did not unequivocally waive the federal government’s sovereign immunity. The Court concluded this unique approach to statutory interpretation with these words: “[t]he foregoing are assuredly not the only readings of subsection (c), but they are plausible ones — which is enough to establish that a reading imposing monetary liability on the Government is hot unambiguous and therefore should not be adopted.” Nordic Village, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. at 1016.
When there are doubts as to the unequivocal expressions of a statute the Supreme Court has resolved these doubts against a finding of waiver. The Court has noted that
the traditional principle that the [Federal] Government’s consent to be sued “must be ‘construed strictly in favor of the sovereign, ’ McMahon v. United States, 342 U.S. 25, 27, [72 S.Ct. 17, 19, 96 L.Ed. 26] (1951), and not ‘enlarge[d] ... beyond what the language requires,’” Ruckelhaus v. Sierra Club, 463 U.S. 680, 685, [103 S.Ct. 3274, 3278, 77 L.Ed.2d 938] (1983) (quoting Eastern Transp. Co. v. United States, 272 U.S. 675, 686 [47 S.Ct. 289, 291, 71 L.Ed. 472] (1927)), [is] a rule of construction that we have had occasion to reaffirm once already this Term, see Ardestani v. INS, 502 U.S. -, - [112 S.Ct. 515, 520-21, 116 L.Ed.2d 496] (1991).
Nordic Village, — U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1015 (emphasis added.)
The Court’s reference in Nordic Village to Ardestani instructive because in that case the United States Supreme Court appeared to recognize that its clear statement test accompanied by its strict rules of construction yielded a result at odds with the clearly defined purpose of the statute. Nevertheless, the Court rejected the petitioner’s argument that the federal government had waived its immunity under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) for deportation proceedings. The Court stated:
Finally, we consider Ardestani’s argument that a functional interpretation of the EAJA is necessary in order to further the legislative goals underlying the statue. The clearly stated objective of the EAJA is to eliminate financial disincentives for those who would defend against unjustified governmental action and thereby to deter the unreasonable exercise of Government authority.
We have no doubt that the broad purposes of the EAJA would be served by making the statue applicable to deportation proceedings. We are mindful that the complexity of immigration procedures, and the enormity of the interests at stake, make legal representation in deportation proceedings especially important. We acknowledge that Ardestani has been forced to shoulder the financial and emotional burdens of a deportation hearing in which the position of the INS was determined not to be substantially justified. But we cannot extend the EAJA to administrative deportation proceedings when the plain language of the statue, coupled with the strict construction of waivers of sovereign immunity, constrain us to do otherwise.
Ardestani, 502 U.S. -, -, 112 S.Ct. 515, 521, 116 L.Ed.2d 496 (1991).
The Supreme Court has frankly stated that “[t]he purpose of the rule is to permit the Government to ‘occupy an apparently favored position.’ ” Library of Congress v. Shaw, 478 U.S. at 315-16, 106 S.Ct. at 2962 (quoting United States v. Verdier, *132164 U.S. 213, 219, 17 S.Ct. 42, 44, 41 L.Ed. 407 (1896)). Based on these strict and well established rules of construction, the search for an affirmative declaration demonstrating a unequivocal expression of statutory waiver in the instant case is difficult indeed. It is clear that nowhere does the McCarran Amendment indicate or suggest that the federal government has waived its sovereign immunity for the purpose of assessing filing fees against it. Rather, the statute merely states that the United States will “be deemed to have waived any right to plead that State laws are inapplicable” in a state water adjudication suit. The specific “State laws” referred to in 43 U.S.C. § 666(a) are nowhere mentioned. While the majority appears to conclude that the best interpretation of “State laws” is to find a waiver of sovereign immunity for all state laws involved in the water adjudication, including state laws requiring the payment of fees, this conclusion is not compatible with the two-part test required by the Supreme Court. The statute is capable of being construed as waiving sovereign immunity only to the extent of “State laws” which are necessary to the appropriation of water. Because the filing fee requirement is not necessary for determining who has a water right, this interpretation is at least “plausible.” As a waiver of immunity is not to be “enlarge[d] ... beyond what the language requires,” Nordic Village, — U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1014-15; Ruckelhaus v. Sierra Club, 463 U.S. 680, 685, 103 S.Ct. 3274, 3277-78, 77 L.Ed.2d 938 (1983) (quoting Eastern Transp. Co. v. United States, 272 U.S. 675, 686, 47 S.Ct. 289, 291, 71 L.Ed. 472 (1927)), a construction of the statute limiting the federal government’s waiver should be applied.
Moreover, the specific portion of 43 U.S.C. § 666(a) limiting the federal government’s waiver so “[tjhat no judgment of costs shall be entered against the United States” in water adjudication suits also leads to exactly the opposite inference as that drawn by the majority. While the majority labors valiantly to demonstrate the difference between costs and fees, it is also at least “plausible,” to use the standard of Nordic Village, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. at 1016, that the term “costs” was meant to include the filing fees at issue in this case. Even the majority acknowledges that “[t]here is a tendency to confuse the terms fees and costs.” Ante at 295. As a plausible statutory interpretation, the explicit reservation of sovereign immunity for costs should be “construed strictly in favor of the sovereign.” Nordic Village, at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1014-15 (quoting McMahon v. United States, 342 U.S. 25, 27, 72 S.Ct. 17, 19, 96 L.Ed. 26 (1951)).
The majority’s holding rests in substantial part on its determination that Congress meant only to exclude “costs” but not “fees” from its waiver of sovereign immunity. While I appreciate the technical distinction attempted by the majority, a distinction which part III of the majority opinion reveals has never been made in Idaho until today, from the point of view of Congress a monetary charge by any name represents “costs” to the federal government. To expect Congress to have drawn a technical distinction between costs and fees when the majority recognizes that the two terms are “often used indiscriminately,” ante at 295, is unrealistic in my view. Therefore, to construe the McCarran Amendment to merely forbid a waiver of “costs,” and then allow a state to afterward enact laws imposing “fees,” will only invite verbal manipulations by states aimed at avoiding federal sovereign immunity.
The majority recognizes that the textual and unequivocal requirements of Nordic Village present the proper analysis for this case. See ante at 291. Nevertheless, it refuses to follow the United States Supreme Court’s analysis and holding because it will lead to a “pre-ordained result.” See ante at 294.
Under this Court’s construction of the McCarran Amendment, the state now has no limit on the fees it can charge the federal government in this adjudication. The federal government cannot avoid being joined in this adjudication because of the McCarran Amendment, and multiplying the potential fee exposure by all the states subject to the McCarran Amendment, it is *133readily apparent why the United States Supreme Court is so concerned about limiting statutory waivers in all cases solely to those areas that were obviously contemplated by Congress.
Notwithstanding these concerns, the majority indicates that if it held otherwise, the “United States would effectively control the adjudication.” Ante at 294. While apparently forgetting whose laws control and which sovereign is waiving its immunity, the majority allows the state to control not only the adjudication, but also how much the United States must pay for the privilege of adjudicating what state law cannot take away without its express consent. While my heart is with the majority, a reading of the McCarran Amendment and the United States Supreme Court cases addressing the sovereign immunity waiver issue will not lead to that result.
Because it is clear under the United States Supreme Court’s cases that the McCarran Amendment does not provide an unequivocal statutory waiver of sovereign immunity for filing fees, I respectfully dissent.