Court Opinion

ID: 9496500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:28:09.904339+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:36.904484
License: Public Domain

PAULINE NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part.
In United States v. Navajo Nation, 537 U.S. 488, 123 S.Ct. 1079, 155 L.Ed.2d 60 (2003), the Supreme Court reversed this court’s ruling that the Indian Mineral Leasing Act of 1938, 25 U.S.C. § 396 et seq., imposed a fiduciary duty upon the United States whose breach could lead to money damages. See Navajo Nation v. United States, 263 F.3d 1325 (Fed.Cir.2001). The Court remanded for further proceedings. It is now appropriate to remand to the Court of Federal Claims for determination of whether a “network” of statutory and regulatory provisions provides the requisite fiduciary status in accordance with United States v. Mitchell, 463 U.S. 206, 103 S.Ct. 2961, 77 L.Ed.2d 580 (1983) (Mitchell II).
I agree that such remand is the next step. However, the panel majority also holds that the Indian Mineral Leasing Act and the Indian Mineral Development Act are to be excluded from consideration in determination of the “network” on remand. This restriction is neither implicit in the Court’s decision, nor supportable as a matter of objective analysis. I must, respectfully, dissent from this constraint on the remand criteria.
DISCUSSION
In February 1964 the Navajo Nation entered into a twenty-year lease with the *1333predecessor to Peabody Coal Company, for the mining of coal on tribal lands. In conjunction with renewal of that lease, events occurred that this court characterized as a breach of the fiduciary obligations of the United States, relying primarily on the provisions of the Indian Mineral Leasing Act. The Supreme Court, reversing this court’s decision, also relied primarily on the Indian Mineral Leasing Act. It is now appropriate for the Court of Federal Claims to determine, in the first instance, whether there is a network of statutes, treaties, and regulations whose content, if enlarged from that considered this far, may affect the nature and consequences of the fiduciary relationship as to this coal leasing activity.
As the majority opinion recognizes, the Court directed primary attention to the Indian Mineral Leasing Act. The Court held that “the Secretary’s involvement in coal leasing under the IMLA more closely resembles the role provided for the Government by the GAA [General Allotment Act] regarding allotted forest lands. See Mitchell I, 445 U.S. at 540-544, 100 S.Ct. 1349.” Navajo Nation, 537 U.S. at 508, 123 S.Ct. at 1092. In Mitchell I the Court held that the General Allotment Act, the only statute there considered, established insufficient government control and supervision of timber resources to impose upon the United States a fiduciary duty whose breach could lead to money damages. See 445 U.S. at 542, 100 S.Ct. 1349 (“We conclude that the [General Allotment] Act created only a limited trust relationship between the United States and the allottee that does not impose any duty upon the Government to manage timber resources.”)
However, in Mitchell II the Court considered several additional statutory and regulatory sources of government supervision and control of timber resources, and held that an “elaborate network” of authority placed a sufficient fiduciary obligation upon the United States to warrant money damages for breach of that duty with respect to the timber resources, citing 25 U.S.C. §§ 406-407 regulating timber sales; 25 U.S.C. § 466 regulations and sustained yield; and 25 U.S.C. §§ 318a and 323-325 regulating rights-of-way. In Mitchell II the Court considered all sources of federal obligation. For this court now to require exclusion of the major statutory sources of federal control and supervision of coal leases is to negate the principle of the Mitchell cases.
Although the Court held in Navajo Nation that the Indian Mineral Leasing Act, standing alone, did not support payment of money damages to compensate for the government’s breach of trust, the Court did not hold that the Indian Mineral Leasing Act must be excluded from the totality of legislative and executive actions that govern the relationship between the Navajo Nation and the United States. Such an exclusion would be untenable in any determination of this relationship, the nature of the statutory and regulatory obligations, and the consequences of the acts here complained of. Unlike the General Allotment Act of Mitchell I, which recognized that the Indian lands were held in trust but was silent as to timber harvesting, the Indian Mineral Leasing Act and its regulations are highly specific as to mineral leasing.
That the Indian Mineral Leasing Act is insufficient standing alone does not bar adding its weight to the totality of statutes, treaties, and regulations governing mineral leasing. For example, the regulations of the Indian Mineral Leasing Act control the size of coal leases by limiting them, with stated exceptions, to 2,560 acres (§ 211.9); they provide that the shape must conform to the system of public land surveys *1334(§ 211.8); they control the duration of mineral leases (§ 211.10); they require giving priority to government purchases of minerals in times of national emergency (§ 211.11). The regulations require the written permission of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs before a Tribe can enter into negotiations for a lease rather than offer the lease in an advertised sale (25 C.F.R. § 211.2); the regulations mandate that lessees shall provide a bond or other collateral and establish the amount of bond to be secured (§ 211.6); the regulations set forth the corporate information to be furnished to the federal superintendent (defined as “the superintendent or other officer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs or of the Government who may have jurisdiction over the lands involved”) (§ 211.7); the regulations establish the federal superintendent’s power to require any information he or she deems necessary (§ 211.7). The regulations require that mining operations must be conducted “in accordance with the operating regulations promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior” (§ 211.20); they provide that rents and royalties earned under such leases must be paid to the superintendent “for the benefit of the [Indian] lessors” (§ 211.12); they set minimum royalties for various minerals (§ 211.15). The regulations require that no mining operations can begin until the lease is approved by the Secretary of the Interior. The Secretary may cancel a lease for any violation of the lease terms or regulations, and may do so without the consent of the Indian tribe (§ 211.27).
Under the panel majority’s holding, none of these examples of government control and supervision can be considered. That is not a reasonable or fair implementation of the Court’s remand. Mitchell II stated the question as “whether the statutes and regulations ... clearly give the Federal Government full responsibility to manage Indian resources and land for the benefit of the Indians.” 463 U.S. at 225, 103 S.Ct. 2961. Determination of the extent of governmental responsibility requires analysis of the totality of the control and supervision provided by the Indian Mineral Leasing Act along with the other statutes, regulations and treaties that govern this relationship.1
In its Respondent’s brief in the Supreme Court, the Navajo Nation listed the “Statutes and Regulations Involved”:
The following authorities establish comprehensive federal control and supervision over Navajo coal leasing and impose trust duties on the Government: two treaties between the United States of America and the Navajo Tribe of Indians, 9 Stat. 574 (1849) and 15 Stat. 667 (1868); the Indian mineral leasing statutes, 25 U.S.C. §§ 396a-396g, 399, and implementing regulations, 25 C.F.R. pts. 211 and 216 subpart A and 43 C.F.R. pt. 3480; the 1948 Indian right-of-way statute, 25 U.S.C. §§ 323-328, and implementing regulations, 25 C.F.R. pt. 169; the Navajo and Hopi Rehabilitation Act of 1950, 25 U.S.C. §§ 631-640; the Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Management Act (FOGRMA), 30 U.S.C. §§ 1701-1757, and regulations applying FOGRMA to Indian coal, 30 C.F.R. § 206.450 et al. and 25 C.F.R. § 211.40 (applying 30 C.F.R. Chapter II, Sub-*1335chapters A and C); and the Indian lands section of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), 30 U.S.C. § 1300, and implementing regulations, 25 C.F.R. pt. 216, subpart B, and 30 C.F.R. pts. 750 and 955.
These sources were not explored by the Court, for the “question presented” was limited to the sources on which the Federal Circuit’s decision had relied. Now on remand, in determining whether there is a “network” that supports a fiduciary status analogous to that found in Mitchell II, all sources must be considered together. From my colleagues’ exclusion of the Indian Mineral Leasing Act and the Indian Mineral Development Act from this network, although these statutes and their regulations are major sources of supervision and control of Indian mineral resources by the United States, I must, respectfully, dissent.

. The panel majority instructs the Court of Federal Claims to "determine whether any of these statutes can fairly be read as money-mandating.” I note that if any such statute were money-mandating, Navajo would have no need to establish a fiduciary duty in the United States through a network of statutes, regulations, and treaties. None of the statutes relied upon in Mitchell II was independently money-mandating; the point of the Court’s decision in that case was that the full fiduciary duty of the United States could be established through such a network although none of the individual components was, standing alone, money-mandating.