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LEGAL INFORMATION INSTITUTE -- CORNELL LAW SCHOOL
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BEDROC LIMITED, LLC V. UNITED STATES (02-1593)
Web-accessible at:
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-1593.ZS.html
Argued January 20, 2004 -- Decided March 31, 2004
Opinion author: Rehnquist
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The Pittman Underground Water Act of 1919 authorized the Secretary of the
Interior to designate certain "nonmineral" Nevada lands on which settlers could
obtain
permits to drill for water. Under sect.8 of the Pittman Act, each land grant,
or patent,
reserved to the United States all coal and other "valuable minerals" in the
lands, and
the right to remove the same. When one of petitioners' predecessors-in-interest
began extracting sand and gravel from land patented under the Pittman Act, the
Bureau of Land Management ruled that he had trespassed against the
Government's reserved interest in the property's "valuable minerals," and the
Interior
Board of Land Appeals affirmed. Petitioner BedRoc Limited, LLC, which
subsequently acquired the property and continued to remove the sand and gravel
under an interim agreement with the Department of the Interior, and petitioner
Western Elite, Inc., filed a quiet title action in Federal District Court. The
court granted
the Government summary judgment, holding that the contested sand and gravel are
"valuable minerals" reserved to the United States by the Pittman Act. The Ninth
Circuit affirmed.
Held: The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded. 314 F.3d 1080,
reversed and remanded. The Chief Justice, joined by Justice O'Connor, Justice
Scalia, and Justice Kennedy, concluded that sand and gravel are not "valuable
minerals" reserved to the United States in land grants issued under the Pittman
Act.
In construing the mineral reservation of the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916
(SRHA)--which was identical to the Pittman Act's except insofar as it reserved
to the
United States "all the coal and other minerals," whereas the Pittman Act
reserved
"valuable minerals"--this Court determined that neither the dictionary nor the
legal
understanding of "minerals" prevailing in 1916 was conclusive, but that the
SRHA's
purpose and history demonstrated that gravel was a "mineral" reserved to the
United States. Watt v. Western Nuclear, Inc., 462 U.S. 36, 55-60. This Court
will
not extend that holding to conclude that sand and gravel are "valuable
minerals." The
Western Nuclear Court had no choice but to speculate about congressional intent
with respect to the scope of the amorphous term "minerals," but here Congress
has
textually narrowed the term's scope by using the modifier "valuable." The
inquiry
begins with the statutory text, and ends there as the text is unambiguous. The
proper inquiry in interpreting mineral reservations focuses on the reservation's
ordinary meaning when it was enacted. Amoco Production Co. v. Southern Ute
Tribe, 526 U.S. 865, 874. Because the Pittman Act applied only to Nevada, the
ultimate question is whether the State's sand and gravel were commonly regarded
as "valuable minerals" in 1919. Common sense says no: They were, and are,
abundant throughout Nevada; they have no intrinsic value; and they were
commercially worthless in 1919. Thus, even if they were regarded as minerals,
no
one would have mistaken them for valuable minerals. The statutory context of
the
Pittman Act's mineral reservation further confirms its ordinary meaning, as
Congress
explicitly cross-referenced the General Mining Act of 1872, and it is beyond
dispute
that when the Pittman Act became law, common sand and gravel could not
constitute
a locatable "valuable mineral deposit" under the General Mining Act. Because
the
statutory reservation's text clearly excludes sand and gravel, there is no
occasion to
resort to legislative history here. Pp. 4-11.
Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Breyer, concluded that the Pittman Underground
Water Act of 1919's mineral reservation cannot be meaningfully distinguished
from
the analogous provision in the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916 (SRHA), and
that the mineral reservations pursuant to both do not include sand and gravel.
Emphasizing "valuable" in the Pittman Act ignores the fact that the Act uses
"valuable
minerals" and "minerals" interchangeably. And it implies that the Court erred
in Watt
v. Western Nuclear, Inc., 462 U.S. 36, not by interpreting "minerals" too
broadly to
include sand and gravel, but by interpreting "minerals" too narrowly by reading
into
the term a requirement that the minerals can be used for commercial purposes.
If
"valuable" were the textual source of a commercial purpose requirement, then the
SRHA's lack of that modifier would imply that the SRHA contains no such
requirement. Because the SRHA and the Pittman Act should be construed
similarly,
the plurality's reasoning with respect to the Pittman Act cannot be confined to
that Act
and naturally carries over to the SRHA. If sand and gravel are not included
within the
Pittman Act's mineral reservations because they were not considered "valuable
minerals" at the time the Act was passed, they, with respect to SRHA lands, were
not considered to be susceptible of commercial use when Congress passed the
SRHA.
Although the Western Nuclear Court incorrectly defined "minerals" to include
sand
and gravel, significant reliance interests would be upset if Western Nuclear
were
overruled. The Pittman Act, however, involves substantially less land than the
SRHA, and the Government does not identify any significant reliance interest
that
would be unsettled by this Court's failing to extend Western Nuclear's
reasoning.
Pp. 1-3
Rehnquist,
C. J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which
O'Connor, Scalia, and Kennedy, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed an opinion
concurring
in the judgment, in which Breyer, J., joined.Stevens, J., filed a dissenting
opinion, in which Souter and Ginsburg, JJ., joined.
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