J.R. Simplot Company, LLC v. Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation, et al.

In the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), 43 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq., Congress established a comprehensive scheme for the management and disposal of federal lands, superseding a patchwork of thousands of land laws that had accumulated since the Founding. FLPMA applies to all “public lands,” defined as “any land and interest in land owned by the United States within the several States and administered by * * * the Bureau of Land Management, without regard to how the United States acquired ownership.” Id. § 1702(e). FLPMA authorizes the Bureau (inter alia) to exchange any “tract of public land” for non-federal lands under a uniform set of criteria and procedures. Id. § 1716(a). The Ninth Circuit held, however, that a 1900 statute that ratified the original acquisition of public lands from an Indian tribe and authorized their disposal through certain listed methods barred the Bureau from exercising FLPMA’s statutory authority for those lands. The court recognized that “it is clear that if the 1900 Act did not exist, FLPMA would permit disposal” here. App., infra, 14a. But it reasoned that Congress could not supplement the 1900 Act’s initial enumeration of disposal methods—which are all now repealed or unavailable— without an express reference to that statute or those lands. The question presented is: Whether the Bureau may exercise its authority under FLPMA to dispose of public lands by exchange notwithstanding an earlier federal statute that had expressly authorized the disposal of those lands only through specified methods.