Papasan v. U.S.

• Decision Date: 05 April 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-4109,84-4109
• Citation: 756 F.2d 1087
• Parties: 23 Ed. Law Rep. 848 B.H. PAPASAN, Superintendent of Education, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1087

756 F.2d 1087

23 Ed. Law Rep. 848

B.H. PAPASAN, Superintendent of Education, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 84-4109.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

April 5, 1985.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied May 21, 1985.

Freeland & Gafford, T.H. Freeland, III, T.H. Freeland, IV, Oxford, Miss., Orma R. Smith, Jr., Corinth, Miss., for plaintiffs-appellants.

William A. Allain, Atty. Gen., Richard Lloyd Arnold, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, Miss., for State of Miss., et al.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.

Before THORNBERRY, REAVLEY and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

A number of county school boards, superintendents of education, and individual schoolchildren in twenty-three Northern Mississippi counties attacked the administration of Mississippi's school lands trust in a suit against federal and state officials. The district court dismissed the complaint against the state defendants on limitations and Eleventh Amendment grounds and the claims against the federal defendants have since been abandoned. Finding all claims either insufficient under the Fourteenth Amendment or barred by the Eleventh Amendment, we affirm.

I

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In its western expansion, the United States encouraged public education by granting school lands to newly-admitted states. ¹ The Land Ordinance of 1785, which provided for the survey and sale of the Northwest Territory, ² thus "reserved the lot No. 16, of every township, for the maintenance of public schools within the said township ..." 1 Laws of the United States 565 (1815). ³ Though title to Sixteenth Section land vested in the state upon approval of the federal survey, the state had a "binding and perpetual obligation to use the granted lands for the support of public education." Andrus v. Utah, 446 U.S. 500, 523, 100 S.Ct. 1803, 1815, 64 L.Ed.2d 458 (1980) (Powell, J., dissenting). All proceeds from the sale or lease of such land were thus "impressed with a trust in favor of the public schools." Id. at 523-24, 100 S.Ct. at 1815. Hence the term, "school lands trust."

A similar history attends the land south of the Ohio River. Under its charter from England, Georgia held claim to most of what now comprises the states of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. In 1802, Georgia ceded these territories to the United States, on the condition that they would eventually attain statehood with the same privileges and rights granted the inhabitants of the Northwest Territory under the Northwest Ordinance of 1789. ⁴ In 1803, Congress provided for the survey and disposition of all lands south of the state of Tennessee to which Indian title had been extinguished. 2 Stat. 229 (1803). As with the Northwest Territory, Sixteenth Sections were reserved, 2 Stat. 229, Ch. 27, Sec. 12 at 234 (1803), and their lease authorized, 3 Stat. 163 (1815), for the support of the public schools within each township. ⁵ In 1817, Congress authorized the formation of the State of Mississippi, 3 Stat. 348 (1817), the survey of its lands, and the reservation of Sixteenth Sections. 3 Stat. 375 (1817). "Title" to certain land in Northern Mississippi, however, remained in the Chickasaw Indian Nation. ⁶ These Indian claims were not extinguished until 1832, when, pursuant to the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek, the Chickasaw Indians ceded all of their lands east of the Mississippi River to the United States. 7 Stat. 381 (1832). ⁷ Under this Treaty, all of the Chickasaw Cession lands were to be surveyed by the United States, and sold to private parties, with the proceeds to the Chickasaw Nation. Unlike other government land sales, however, no Sixteenth Section land was reserved from the sale of the Chickasaw lands. See City of Corinth v. Robertson, 125 Miss. 31, 87 So. 464 (1921). ⁸ This case has its genesis in that circumstance.

To remedy this deficiency, Congress, in 1836, authorized the selection of other unsold public land in the Chickasaw Cession, equal to and in lieu of the unreserved Sixteenth Sections. Once selected, these lands were to "vest in the State of Mississippi for the use of schools within said territory in said State." 5 Stat. 116, Sec. 2 (1836). ⁹ After the Mississippi Legislature accepted the Chickasaw Cession Lieu Lands, ¹⁰ 1844 Miss.Laws Ch. LXVII at 238, it authorized their ninety-nine-year lease, "renewable forever," at a price not less than six dollars per acre, with the proceeds therefrom "to be held in trust by said state for the use of schools in the Chickasaw Cession." 1848 Miss.Laws Ch. III at 62. In 1852, apparently to clarify Mississippi's authority to lease or sell its lieu land, see Jones v. Madison County, 72 Miss. 777, 794-95, 18 So. 87 (1895), Congress ratified all past leases and authorized the State to sell the lands for the support of the Chickasaw Cession schools. 10 Stat. 6 (1852). The Mississippi Legislature then authorized the fee sale of the Chickasaw Cession Lieu Lands and directed that the sales proceeds be invested in eight percent loans to the State's railroads. 1856 Miss.Laws Ch. LVI. Most of the investment was lost when the railroads were destroyed in the Civil War.

Since then, the Mississippi Legislature has appropriated monies to replace the interest lost on its failed investment, see 1878 Miss.Laws, Ch. IX at 86, first at eight and later at six percent. See Miss. Const. Art. VIII, Sec. 212 (1890). These funds are paid each year to the Chickasaw Cession counties for the support of their public schools in lieu of the returns on the unreserved Sixteenth Section lands or the ill-disposed Lieu Lands. Under this current system, the highest annual receipt from the lieu land appropriation in the Chickasaw Cession in 1980 was $4,586.72 or $.80 per student, as compared to the $69,112.34 or $31.25 per pupil average realized from the school lands trusts in other Mississippi counties.

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Plaintiffs and intervenors here include a group of county school boards, superintendents of education, and individual school children, all residing in the Chickasaw Cession counties in North Mississippi. ¹¹ In June of 1981, these plaintiffs sued certain federal and state officials attacking the difference between the school lands appropriations to the Chickasaw Cession and the monies paid to other schools from trust funds. The state defendants include the State of Mississippi, its Governor, the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of State, the Superintendent of Education, and members of the State Board of Education and the Lieu Land Commission, sued in official and successor capacities.

The complaint chronicled purported "illegalities" dating back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1785. It sought a declaratory judgment that various federal acts and treaties, as well as certain Mississippi enactments, were "unlawful, void, and unenforceable" insofar as they purported to authorize the sale of the Chickasaw Cession Sixteenth Section Lands or Lieu Lands. The complaint also alleged that both the federal and state defendants had breached perpetual and binding obligations of the school lands trust. The claims against the federal defendants were specifically based on breach of promise to fund the Chickasaw Cession trust and failure to prevent the State of Mississippi from wasting trust property. The State defendants allegedly breached their trust duties by improperly investing the proceeds from the unlawful sale of the Chickasaw Cession Lieu Lands. The complaint also alleged a claim under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, asserting that the State violated both the due process and equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment by allotting the Chickasaw Cession counties disproportionate school lands appropriations, thereby depriving their schoolchildren of a "minimally adequate level of education." ¹²

The complaint prayed for a wide range of relief, including a "conveyance of ... real and/or personal property (including money) of equivalent income producing value" to the Chickasaw Cession Sixteenth Sections and/or Lieu Lands and asked that the defendants "acquire, set aside and make available" new lieu lands. Additionally, the plaintiffs sought to "enjoin" and "direct" the defendants to establish "a fund or funds of such value" as was reasonably necessary to provide "hereafter" and "in perpetuity" annual income to the Chickasaw Cession school districts at an "equitable and just" level, equivalent to what the Chickasaw Cession districts would enjoy if the State still owned the unlawfully sold land. The plaintiffs also sought to be "compensate[d] and ma[d]e whole" for the income and interest lost through imprudent trust management from 1832 to the present. Finally, the plaintiffs requested that the defendants take whatever other steps were reasonably necessary to "[e]liminate and compensate and for the future guarantee and protect plaintiffs and the plaintiff class against ... denials and deprivations of their rights to due process of law and to the equal protection of the laws," and then to "[d]evelop, prepare and file with the Court ... a plan for the orderly implementation of the declaratory and injunctive relief otherwise granted."

After "accepting as true all factual allegations made by plaintiffs," the district court granted all motions to dismiss. The court held the claims against the federal defendants barred by sovereign immunity, laches, and statutes of limitations. This order dismissing the federal defendants is not before us, as its appeal has been dismissed by joint stipulation. By separate order, the district court also dismissed the action against the state defendants. The court held that all of the state actions complained of were before the expiration of any applicable statute of limitations and that "any monetary remedy [was] barred by the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution." The district court held that under...