Court Opinion

ID: 9429996
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:32.304999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:19.280446
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
dissenting.
I agree with much of Justice Stevens’ dissent. I write separately only because under the special circumstances of this case I do not believe it necessary to decide what Congress actually intended. Even if the Court is correct in believing that Congress intended to require filings on or before the next-to-the-last day of the year, rather than, more reasonably, by the end of the calendar year itself, the statutory deadline is too uncertain to satisfy constitutional requirements. It simply fails to give property holders clear and definite notice of what they must do to protect their existing property interests.
As the Court acknowledges, ante, at 86, the Government since the 19th century has encouraged its citizens to discover and develop certain minerals on the public lands. Under the general mining laws, 30 U. S. C. §22 et seq., an individual who locates a mining claim has the right of exclusive posses*113sion of the land for mining purposes and may extract and sell minerals he finds there without paying a royalty to the Federal Government. §26. After making a valuable mineral discovery, the claimant may hold the claim so long as he performs $100 worth of assessment work each year. § 28. If he performs certain additional conditions, the claimant may patent the claim for a nominal sum and thereby obtain further rights over the land and minerals. See § 29. Until recently, there were no federal recordation requirements.
Faced with the uncertainty stale mining claims had created as to property rights on public lands, Congress enacted § 314 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, 90 Stat. 2769, 43 U. S. C. § 1744.1 This provision required existing claimholders to record their claims in order to retain them. More specifically, it required that “within the three-year period following October 21, 1976 and prior to December 31 of each year thereafter,” § 1744(a), claimholders file with *114the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) a copy of a notice of intention to retain their claims, an affidavit of assessment work, or a special form, §§ 1744(a)(1) and (2). Failure to make either the initial or a subsequent yearly filing was to “be deemed conclusively to constitute an abandonment of the mining claim . . . § 1744(c).
Appellees (the Lockes) are owners of 10 unpatented mining claims on federal land in Nevada. Appellees’ predecessors located these claims in 1952 and 1954, and appellees have, since they purchased the claims in 1960, earned their livelihood by producing gravel and other building materials from them. From 1960 to the present, they have produced approximately $4 million worth of materials. During the 1979-1980 assessment year alone, they produced gravel and other materials worth more than $1 million. In no sense were their claims stale.
The Lockes fully complied with § 314’s initial recordation requirement by properly filing a notice of location on October 19, 1979. In order to ascertain how to comply with the subsequent yearly recordation requirements, the Lockes sent their daughter, who worked in their business office, to the Ely, Nevada, office of the BLM. There she inquired into how and when they should file the assessment notice and was told, among other things, that the documents should be filed at the Reno office “on or before December 31, 1980.” 573 F. Supp. 472, 474 (Nev. 1983). Following this advice, the Lockes hand-delivered their documents at the Reno office on that date. On April 4, 1981, they received notice from the BLM that their mining claims were “abandoned and void,” App. to Juris. Statement 22a, because they had filed on, rather than prior to, December 31.2 It is this 1-day differ*115ence in good-faith interpretation of the statutory deadline that gives rise to the present controversy.
Justice Stevens correctly points to a number of circumstances that cast doubt both on the care with which Congress drafted § 314 and on its meaning. Specifically, he notes that (i) the section does not clearly describe what must be filed, let alone when it must be filed; (ii) BLM’s rewording of the deadline in its implementing regulations, 43 CFR § 3833.2-l(a)(l) (1984), indicates that the BLM itself considered the statutory deadline confusing; (iii) lest there be any doubt that the BLM recognized this possible confusion, even it had described the section in a pamphlet distributed to miners in 1978 as requiring filing “on or before December 31”; (iv) BLM, charged with enforcing the section, has interpreted it quite flexibly; and (v) irrationally requiring property holders to file by one day before the end of the year, rather than by the end of the year itself, creates “a trap for the unwary,” post, at 123. As Justice Stevens also states, these facts, particularly the last, suggest not only that Congress drafted § 314 inartfully but also that Congress may actually have intended to require filing “on or before,” not “prior to,” December 31. This is certainly the more reasonable interpretation of congressional intent and is consistent with all the policies of the Act.
I do not believe, however, that given the special circumstances of this case we need determine what Congress actually intended. As the Court today recognizes, the Takings Clause imposes some limitations on the Government’s power to impose forfeitures. Ante, at 103-108. In Texaco, Inc. v. Short, 454 U. S. 516 (1982), we identified one of the most important of these limitations when we stated that “the State has the power to condition the permanent retention of [a] *116property right on the performance of reasonable conditions . . . Id., at 526 (emphasis added); accord, Jackson v. Lamphire, 3 Pet. 280, 290 (1830) (“Cases may occur where the [forfeiture] provisio[n]. . . may be so unreasonable as to amount to a denial of a right, and call for the interposition of the court . . .”). Furthermore, conditions, like those here, imposed after a property interest is created must also meet due process standards. Usery v. Turner Elkhom Mining Co., 428 U. S. 1, 16-17 (1976). These standards require, among other things, that there be no question as to what actions an individual must take to protect his interests. Texaco, Inc. v. Short, supra, at 532-533. Together the Takings and Due Process Clauses prevent the Government from depriving an individual of property rights arbitrarily.
In the present case there is no claim that a yearly filing requirement is itself unreasonable. Rather, the claim arises from the fact that the language “prior to December 31” creates uncertainty as to when an otherwise reasonable filing period ends.3 Given the natural tendency to interpret this phrase as “by the end of the calendar year,” rather than “on or before the next-to-the-last day of the calendar year,” I believe this uncertainty violated the standard of certainty *117and definiteness that the Constitution requires. The statement in at least one of the Government’s own publications that filing was required “on or before December 31,” Department of the Interior, Staking a Mining Claim on Federal Lands 10 (1978), supports this conclusion. Terminating a property interest because a property holder reasonably believed that under the statute he had an additional day to satisfy any filing requirements is no less arbitrary than terminating it for failure to satisfy these same conditions in an unreasonable amount of time. Cf. Wilson v. Iseminger, 185 U. S. 55, 62 (1902); Terry v. Anderson, 95 U. S. 628, 632-633 (1877). Although the latter may rest on impossibility, the former rests on good-faith performance a day late of what easily could have been performed the day before. Neither serves a purpose other than forcing an arbitrary forfeiture of property rights to the State.
I believe the Constitution requires that the law inform the property holder with more certainty and definiteness than did §314 when he must fulfill any recording requirements imposed after a property interest is created. Given the statutory uncertainty here, I would find a forfeiture imposed for filing on December 31 to be invalid.4
I accordingly dissent.

 Section 314(a), 43 U. S. C. § 1744(a), states in its entirety:
“Recordation of Mining Claims
“(a) Filing requirements
“The owner of an unpatented lode or placer mining claim located prior to October 21, 1976, shall, within the three-year period following October 21, 1976 and prior to December 31 of each year thereafter, file the instruments required by paragraphs (1) and (2) of this subsection. The owner of an unpatented lode or placer mining claim located after October 21,1976 shall, prior to December 31 of each year following the calendar year in which the said claim was located, file the instruments required by paragraphs (1) and (2) of this subsection:
“(1) File for record in the office where the location notice or certificate is recorded either a notice of intention to hold the mining claim (including but not limited to such notices as are provided by law to be filed when there has been a suspension or deferment of annual assessment work), an affidavit of assessment work performed thereon, on [sic] a detailed report provided by section 28-1 of title 30, relating thereto.
“(2) File in the office of the Bureau designated by the Secretary a copy of the official record of the instrument filed or recorded pursuant to paragraph (1) of this subsection, including a description of the location of the mining claim sufficient to locate the claimed lands on the ground.”

 The notice from the BLM also stated that “[s]ubject to valid intervening rights of third parties or the United States void or abandoned claims or sites may be relocated and, based on the new location date, the appropriate instruments may be refiled within the time periods prescribed by the regulations.” App. to Juris. Statement 22a. Unlike most claimants, however, *115the Lockes were unable to relocate their claims because the Common Varieties Act of 1955, 30 U. S. C. § 611 et seq., had withdrawn deposits of common building materials from coverage of the general mining laws. To them, forfeiture meant not relocation and refiling, but rather irrevocable loss of their claims — the source of their livelihood.

 The Court believes it is “obligated to apply the ‘prior to December 31’ language by its terms” because “its meaning is clear.” Ante, at 96. Such clarity, however, is not to be found in the words themselves. Courts, for example, have used these same words in similar contexts clearly to mean “by the end of the year,” e. g., AMF Inc. v. Jewett, 711 F. 2d 1096, 1108, 1115 (CA1 1983); Bay State Gas Co. v. Commissioner, 689 F. 2d 1, 2 (CA1 1982), or have contrasted them with other phrases such as “[f]rom January 1,” NYSA-ILA Vacation & Holiday Fund v. Waterfront Comm’n of New York Harbor, 732 F. 2d 292, 295, and n. 6 (CA2), cert. denied, 469 U. S. 852 (1984), or “after December 31,” Peabody Coal Co. v. Lowis, 708 F. 2d 266, 267, n. 3 (CA7 1983), in ways that strongly suggest this meaning. Various administrative agencies have also followed this same usage in promulgating their regulations. E. g., 24 CFR § 570.423(b) (1984); 31 CFR §515.560(i) (1984); 40 CFR §52.1174 (1984).

 Parties, of course, ordinarily are bound to the consequences of their failing strictly to meet statutory deadlines. This is true, for example, as to statutes of limitations and other filing deadlines clearly specified. Because of the special circumstances Justice Stevens identifies and the constitutional concerns identified above, this case is unique.