Each state below opens a per-state dossier with the Enabling Act citation, the current fund value where known, the count of state Attorney General opinions in substrate, the key precedent cases, and a Trust Integrity grade reflecting whether the state's school trust is presently intact, breached and recovered, breached and uncorrected, or under review. Hover or focus a state on the map below for a one-line summary; click any state — on the map or in the alphabetical list — to open its dossier.
Trust Integrity taxonomy
- Intact and funded. Trust is performing its function; assets preserved and beneficiaries paid.
- Breached and recovered. Historical breach addressed by reform or precedent; current posture is healthy.
- Breached and uncorrected. Historical breach unaddressed; current posture is breach.
- Under review. Performance signals mixed or under active dispute; grade pending substrate work.
- Pending dossier. Phase 2 substrate not yet ingested for this state.
See the Trust Integrity Grade Methodology for the rubric, the revision policy, and the limitations of this taxonomy.
US School Trust Lands — Court Room Atlas Map
Hover or focus a trust-lands state to see its trust-integrity grade and a one-line summary. Click or press Enter to open its dossier. States rendered in muted gray did not receive school-section grants under the Land Ordinance regime.
All states, alphabetical
- Alaska Under review Alaska entered the Union under a non-traditional statehood-grant model. Margaret Bird's compilation includes Alaska school-land cases addressing duties-of-trustee.
- Arizona Intact and funded Express 'in trust' language in the 1910 Enabling Act; SCOTUS authority in Lassen and ASARCO. Land Department and Permanent Land Endowment Trust Fund manage roughly 9 million acres. Pierce v. Ducey litigation tested Proposition 123 against the enabling-act compact.
- California Breached and uncorrected First 2-section state (1853 Act). The architecture didn't fail; it was never installed. Of ~5.5M acres granted in 1853, ~458,843 fee-owned acres remain; modern revenue (~$6.4M FY 2024–25) is routed to CalSTRS, not to K–12 schools. No permanent fund corpus comparable to peer states; the 1849 Constitution's perpetual-fund language gave way by 1879 to attendance-apportionment. The School Land Bank Act (1984, Pub. Res. Code §§ 8701–8702) belatedly installed statutory trustee duties at the State Lands Commission.
- Colorado Under review Branson Sch. Dist. RE-82 v. Romer (D. Colo. 1997) is the federal-court authority that state-constitutional changes cannot unilaterally release enabling-act trust obligations.
- Idaho Breached and recovered Idaho Watersheds Project v. State Board (1999) struck down below-market grazing leases on trust lands and is the modern Western market-rate-leasing precedent.
- Kansas Pending dossier Phase 2 — dossier pending.
- Louisiana Under review Louisiana was the first state admitted after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Margaret Bird's compilation cites Louisiana trust-land authorities on duties-of-trustee.
- Minnesota Breached and uncorrected Canonical Pine Lands Scandal — the post-Civil-War phantom-homesteader fraud pattern documented in the 1904 state investigation. Lumber companies, working through bribed land officers ($25/claim), lifted names from St. Paul and Chicago city directories to file fictitious homestead claims on school sections. By 1904 more than two-thirds of Minnesota's original 8-million-acre grant was sold or lost. HF 3900 / SF 3593 (2026) is the live constitutional-amendment thread.
- Mississippi Under review Early-19th-century admission. Margaret Bird's compilation cites Mississippi school-trust authorities.
- Montana Breached and recovered Strong constitutional and statutory trust framework. Department of State Lands v. Pettibone (1985) is a foundational state-supreme-court precedent. MT ASTL v. State (BDV-2019-1272) tested citizen-standing for trust enforcement.
- Nebraska Under review Nebraska Supreme Court's Ebke (1951) is one of the leading state-court fiduciary-strictness opinions; Platte Valley (1946) establishes the contractual character of the trust. Margaret Bird substrate adds the Penry/Alt-survey diptych — federally-perpetrated GLO survey fraud carving private titles out of state school sections — alongside a modern professionalized Board of Educational Lands and Funds.
- Nevada Pending dossier Phase 2 — dossier pending. Nevada is unusual: most of its admission-grant school lands were exchanged for a 2-million-acre lump sum that was substantially exhausted before its trust character was fully recognized.
- New Mexico Under review Express 'in trust' language in the 1910 Enabling Act. State Land Office manages roughly 9 million surface acres and 13 million mineral acres for trust beneficiaries.
- North Dakota Pending dossier Phase 2 — dossier pending. North Dakota was admitted alongside SD, MT, and WA under the 1889 Enabling Act.
- Oklahoma Under review Oklahoma Educ. Ass'n v. Nigh (1982) is the anti-diversion precedent and the source of the 'irrevocable compact' formulation later quoted in Kanaly v. State.
- Oregon Breached and uncorrected Strong constitutional architecture (1857); early land loss through the 1887 Infamous Act and Oregon Land Fraud Trials; modern Elliott State Forest decoupling (2017–2022); January 28, 2026 Court of Appeals standing victory in OASTL v. State.
- South Dakota Under review Kanaly v. State by and through Janklow (1985) aggregates the SCOTUS authorities into the triadic 'irrevocable compact / solemn agreement / contract' formulation that downstream state courts have adopted. Margaret Bird substrate documents the Beadle architecture (a $10/acre constitutional minimum sale price) and its modern continuation in an elected Land Commissioner lineage — the strongest single positive-thesis record in the project.
- Texas Intact and funded Texas is a state-derived state: it retained its public lands at annexation and created the Permanent School Fund (1854) from its own land base. The PSF is the largest education endowment in the United States.
- Utah Breached and recovered Deep nineteenth- and twentieth-century breaches (coal-list pattern, 1989 audit-ransacking, Permanent Fund losses under improved-farmer loans, 1980s coal-lease disparity) substantially counterbalanced by the modern SITLA / SITFO / LTPAO / School LAND Trust architecture. Permanent fund grew ~60× from 1994 to 2025; current annual distributions exceed $100M.
- Washington Breached and recovered County of Skamania v. State (1984) is Washington's leading school-trust breach precedent. Department of Natural Resources manages substantial state trust lands.
- Wisconsin Intact and funded Last 1-section state (1848). Same lean federal text as Ohio — Section 16 only, no express trust, no enforcement provision — but Article X of the 1848 Wisconsin Constitution walled the proceeds off behind one of the cleanest fiduciary architectures in the country, with the Attorney General inside the trustee body (BCPL). Common School Fund principal above $1.6 billion; record $73.5 million FY 2026 distribution to school libraries; unbroken State Trust Fund Loan Program record since 1871.
- Wyoming Pending dossier Phase 2 — dossier pending. ASTL substrate includes Wyoming thematic tag.
First-draft preview. SVG tile-grid map and color-coded legend adopted from the ASTL State Tracker pattern; Library's 4-grade Trust Integrity scheme retained.
