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Riedel v. Anderson6/4/2003
s imposed restrictions on the use of the land or its sale proceeds. For example, the Michigan Constitution included a provision requiring that the proceeds from the sale of school lands be put into a permanent fund, a pattern that almost all subsequently-admitted states followed in accepting the terms of their enabling acts. Budge, supra, at 227.
With the admission of Colorado in 1876, Congress began to include in the states' enabling acts some of the same restrictions on the use of the school lands that prior states had constitutionally imposed upon themselves. The Colorado Enabling Act, Ch. 139, § 14, 18 Stat. 474, 476 (1875), provided " hat the two sections of land in each township herein granted for the support of common schools shall be disposed of only at public sale and at a price not less than two dollars and fifty cents per acre, the proceeds to constitute a permanent school-fund, the interest of which to be expended in the support of the common schools." See also Branson Sch. Dist., 161 F.3d at 634.
The Wyoming Act of Admission granted sections 16 and 36 of every township to the state "for support of common schools" and further provided:
All lands herein granted for educational purposes shall be disposed of only at public sale, the proceeds to constitute a permanent school fund, the interest of which only shall be expended in the support of said schools. But said lands may, under such regulations as the legislature shall prescribe, be leased for mineral, grazing, agricultural, or other purposes, provided that the term of agricultural and grazing leases shall not exceed 10 years; and such land shall not be subject to preemption, homestead entry, or any other entry under the land laws of the United States, whether surveyed or unsurveyed, but shall be reserved for school purposes only.
26 Stat. 222, Ch. 664, § 5. These provisions are nearly identical to those of the Colorado Enabling Act, except that the Wyoming Act of Admission states no minimum purchase price for the school lands.
The most restrictive of the state enabling acts was the Arizona-New Mexico Enabling Act at the end of the accession period in 1912. That act stated expressly that the lands granted to the state are held "in trust"; provided that the products and proceeds of the lands "shall be subject to the same trusts as the lands"; prescribed the manner of advertising, selling and leasing the lands; directed the method of maintaining and investing the permanent fund; voided any transaction not in conformity with the enabling act; and directed the Attorney General of the United States to enforce all provisions related to the trust lands. Arizona-New Mexico Enabling Act, 36 Stat. 557, 561-568 (June 20, 1910). In Ervien v. United States, 251 U.S. 41, 40 S.Ct. 75, 64 L.Ed. 128 (1919), and Lassen v. Arizona Highway Department, 385 U.S. 458, 87 S.Ct. 584, 17 L.Ed.2d 515 (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that the Congress had the power to and did in fact convey the school lands in those states subject to an express trust, such that trust funds could not be used to advertise the states resources nor could the state obtain highway easements over trust lands without compensating the trust.
It is clear that Wyoming's admission, both chronologically and conceptually, falls somewhere between Congress' laissez faire approach to the states admitted in the early nineteenth century and the closely regulated express trust conveyances to New Mexico and Arizona in 1912. The Wyoming Constitution, adopted before the passage of the Act of Admission, addresses the federally granted lands in several of its provisions:
Art. 7, § 2. School revenues:
The followin
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