Hodel v. Irving

• Citation: 107 S.Ct. 2076,481 U.S. 704,95 L.Ed.2d 668
• Decision Date: 18 May 1987
• Docket Number: No. 85-637,85-637
• Parties: Donald P. HODEL, Secretary of the Interior, Appellant, v. Mary IRVING et al
• Court: United States Supreme Court

481 U.S. 704

107 S.Ct. 2076

95 L.Ed.2d 668

Donald P. HODEL, Secretary of the Interior, Appellant,

v Mary IRVING et al.

No. 85-637.

Argued Oct. 6, 1986.

Decided May 18, 1987.

Syllabus

As a means of ameliorating the problem of extreme fractionation of Indian lands that, pursuant to federal statutes dating back to the end of the 19th century, were allotted to individual Indians and held in trust by the United States, and that, through successive generations, had been splintered into multiple undivided interests by descent or devise, Congress enacted § 207 (later amended) of the Indian Land Consolidation Act of 1983. As originally enacted, § 207 provided that no undivided fractional interest in such lands shall descend by intestacy or devise, but, instead, shall escheat to the tribe "if such interest represents 2 per centum or less of the total acreage in such tract and has earned to its owner less than $100 in the preceding year before it is due to escheat." No provision for the payment of compensation to the owners of the interests covered by § 207 was made. Appellees are members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and either are, or represent, heirs or devisees of Tribe members who died while the original terms of § 207 were in effect and who owned fractional interests subject to § 207. Appellees filed suit in Federal District Court, claiming that § 207 resulted in a taking of property without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The District Court held that the statute was constitutional, but the Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that appellees' decedents had a right, derived from the original Sioux allotment statute, to control disposition of their property at death, that appellees had standing to invoke such right, and that the taking of the right without compensation to decedents' estates violated the Fifth Amendment.

Held:

1. Appellees have standing to challenge § 207, which has deprived them of the fractional interests they otherwise would have inherited. This is sufficient injury-in-fact to satisfy the case-or-controversy requirement of Article III of the Constitution. Moreover, the concerns of the prudential standing doctrine are also satisfied, even though appellees do not assert that their own property rights have been taken unconstitutionally, but rather that their decedents' right to pass the property at death has been taken. For decedent Indians with trust property, federal statutes require the Secretary of the Interior to assume the gen- eral role of the executor or administrator of the estate in asserting the decedent's surviving claims. Here, however, the Secretary's responsibilities in that capacity include the administration of the statute that appellees claim is unconstitutional, so that he cannot be expected to assert decedents' rights to the extent that they turn on the statute's constitutionality. Under these circumstances, appellees can appropriately serve as their decedents' representatives for purposes of asserting the latters' Fifth Amendment rights. Pp. 711-712.

2. The original version of § 207 effected a "taking" of appellees' decedents' property without just compensation. Determination of the question whether a governmental property regulation amounts to a "taking" requires ad hoc factual inquiries as to such factors as the impact of the regulation, its interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations, and the character of the governmental action. Here, the relative impact of § 207 upon appellees' decedents can be substantial. Even assuming, arguendo, that the income generated by the parcels in question may be properly thought of as de minimis, their value may not be. Although appellees' decedents retain full beneficial use of the property during their lifetimes as well as the right to convey it inter vivos, the right to pass on valuable property to one's heirs is itself a valuable right. However, the extent to which any of appellees' decedents had investment-backed expectations in passing on the property is dubious. Also weighing weakly in favor of the statute is the fact that there is something of an "average reciprocity of advantage," Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 415, 43 S.Ct. 158, 160, 67 L.Ed. 322, to the extent that owners of escheatable interests maintain a nexus to the Tribe, and consolidation of lands in the Tribe benefits Tribe members since consolidated lands are more productive than fractionated lands. But the character of the Government regulation here is extraordinary since it amounts to virtually the abrogation of the right to pass on property to one's heirs, which right has been part of the Anglo-American legal system since feudal times. Moreover, § 207 effectively abolishes both descent and devise of the property interest even when the passing of the property to the heir might result in consolidation of property—as, for instance, when the heir already owns another undivided interest in the property—which is the governmental purpose sought to be advanced. Pp. 712-718.

758 F.2d 1260 (CA 8 1985), affirmed.

O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and BRENNAN, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and SCALIA, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which MARSHALL and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined, post, p. ----. SCALIA, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and POWELL, J., joined, post, p. ----. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which WHITE, J., joined, post, p. ----.

Edwin S. Kneedler, Washington, D.C., for appellant.

Yvette Hall War Bonnett, Mission, S.D., for appellees.

Justice O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question presented is whether the original version of the "escheat" provision of the Indian Land Consolidation Act of 1983, Pub.L. 97-459, Tit. II, 96 Stat. 2519, effected a "taking" of appellees' decedents' property without just compensation.

I

Towards the end of the 19th century, Congress enacted a series of land Acts which divided the communal reservations of Indian tribes into individual allotments for Indians and unallotted lands for non-Indian settlement. This legislation seems to have been in part animated by a desire to force Indians to abandon their nomadic ways in order to "speed the Indians' assimilation into American society," Solem v. Bartlett, 465 U.S. 463, 466, 104 S.Ct. 1161, 1164, 79 L.Ed.2d 443 (1984), and in part a result of pressure to free new lands for further white settlement. Ibid. Two years after the enactment of the General Allotment Act of 1887, ch. 119, 24 Stat. 388, Congress adopted a specific statute authorizing the division of the Great Reservation of the Sioux Nation into separate reservations and the allotment of specific tracts of reservation land to individual Indians, con- ditioned on the consent of three-fourths of the adult male Sioux. Act of Mar. 2, 1889, ch. 405, 25 Stat. 888. Under the Act, each male Sioux head of household took 320 acres of land and most other individuals 160 acres. 25 Stat. 890. In order to protect the allottees from the improvident disposition of their lands to white settlers, the Sioux allotment statute provided that the allotted lands were to be held in trust by the United States. Id., at 891. Until 1910, the lands of deceased allottees passed to their heirs "according to the laws of the State or Territory" where the land was located, ibid., and after 1910, allottees were permitted to dispose of their interests by will in accordance with regulations promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior. 36 Stat. 856, 25 U.S.C. § 373. Those regulations generally served to protect Indian ownership of the allotted lands.

The policy of allotment of Indian lands quickly proved disastrous for the Indians. Cash generated by land sales to whites was quickly dissipated, and the Indians, rather than farming the land themselves, evolved into petty landlords, leasing their allotted lands to white ranchers and farmers and living off the meager rentals. Lawson, Heirship: The Indian Amoeba, reprinted in Hearing on S. 2480 and S. 2663 before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, 98th Cong., 2d Sess., 82-83 (1984). The failure of the allotment program became even clearer as successive generations came to hold the allotted lands. Thus 40-, 80-, and 160-acre parcels became splintered into multiple undivided interests in land, with some parcels having hundreds, and many parcels having dozens, of owners. Because the land was held in trust and often could not be alienated or partitioned, the fractionation problem grew and grew over time.

A 1928 report commissioned by the Congress found the situation administratively unworkable and economically wasteful. L. Meriam, Institute for Government Research, The Problem of Indian Administration 40-41. Good, potentially productive, land was allowed to lie fallow, amidst great poverty, because of the difficulties of managing property held in this manner. Hearings on H.R. 11113 before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 10 (1966) (remarks of Rep. Aspinall). In discussing the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, Representative Howard said:

"It is in the case of the inherited allotments, however, that the administrative costs become incredible. . . . On allotted reservations, numerous cases exist where the shares of each individual heir from lease money may be 1 cent a month. Or one heir may own minute fractional shares in 30 or 40 different allotments. The cost of leasing, bookkeeping, and distributing the proceeds in many cases far exceeds the total income. The Indians and the Indian Service personnel are thus trapped in a meaningless system of minute partition in which all thought of the possible use of land to satisfy human needs is lost in a mathematical haze of bookkeeping." 78 Cong.Rec. 11728 (1934).

In 1934, in response to arguments such as these,...