The Atlas categorizes each of the twenty trust-lands states (plus Texas, state-derived) under one of five Trust Integrity grades. This page explains how a state earns each grade. The methodology is provisional — refinements are documented in the page's revision history, and out-of-cycle revisions are noted on each per-state dossier.
The five grades
Intact and funded
A state earns Intact and funded when all of the following hold:
- The state's federal school-trust grant remains in trust, with the corpus preserved at or above the value at admission (in inflation-adjusted terms).
- The Permanent School Fund (or equivalent) reports an annual distribution to schools traceable to trust revenue.
- No reported episode of legislative diversion in the past 25 years, or any prior diversion has been judicially or legislatively corrected.
- The state's enabling-act fiduciary duties are recognized by the state's high court or its attorney general as enforceable trust obligations.
Current Atlas entries. Arizona, Texas. (See each state's dossier for the supporting record.)
Breached and recovered
A state earns Breached and recovered when:
- A historical diversion or impairment of the trust is documented in primary sources.
- A corrective action — judicial ruling, legislative reform, constitutional amendment, or sustained administrative remediation — has restored the trust's substantive operation.
- The corpus is currently being managed under the recovered terms.
Current Atlas entries. Idaho, Montana, Utah, Washington. Utah is the project's reference case: deep nineteenth- and twentieth-century breaches counterbalanced by the modern SITLA / SITFO / LTPAO / School LAND Trust architecture.
Breached and uncorrected
A state earns Breached and uncorrected when:
- A diversion or impairment is documented in primary sources.
- No corrective action of sufficient scope has yet occurred.
- Beneficiary advocacy or litigation is active, or has been recently attempted.
Current Atlas entries. Minnesota (1880s–1900s Pine Lands Scandal phantom-homesteader fraud; reforms after 1904 stopped the active loss but did not restore the corpus); Oregon (active OASTL litigation; January 28, 2026 Court of Appeals standing victory).
Under review
A state earns Under review when:
- Substantive concerns about trust management have been raised by a credible party — state auditor, beneficiary advocacy group, attorney general, scholarly source.
- The factual record is incomplete or contested.
- No final judicial or administrative determination has been reached.
Current Atlas entries. Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota.
Pending dossier
A state is Pending dossier when the Library has not yet completed a primary-source review of the state's trust record. This is an editorial label — a description of the Library's current state of work, not a substantive judgment about the state's trust.
Current Atlas entries. Kansas, Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming.
How grades are revised
The Atlas grade for a state changes when one of the following occurs:
- A judicial ruling materially alters the trust's enforcement posture.
- A legislative or constitutional change materially alters the trust's protections.
- The Library's primary-source review surfaces material new evidence about the state's historical or current record.
- A reviewer — named, credible, and pointing to a primary source — identifies a misclassification.
Grade revisions are documented in the state dossier's revision history. The Library does not change grades on the basis of advocacy framing or contested editorial characterization absent primary-source support.
Reviewer process
The Trust Integrity grade for each state is reviewed annually. Material developments between annual reviews — a new state-supreme-court decision, a new enabling-act case in federal court, a state constitutional amendment, a credible new state-auditor report — can trigger out-of-cycle revisions. Out-of-cycle revisions are documented in the affected state's dossier and in the Library's site-update log at /updates/.
Limitations
These grades are scholarly characterizations, not legal determinations. They reflect the Library's editorial judgment based on primary sources — enabling acts, state constitutions, state-supreme-court opinions, attorney-general opinions, agency reports, and credible historical scholarship. They are not substitutes for legal advice or jurisdictional research; readers researching a particular state's posture should consult the primary sources cited in that state's dossier and verify current law before relying on any grade.
The five-grade scheme is also one of several possible frames. The companion site ASTL National grades the same twenty states against current disclosure-and-fund-performance signals rather than the Library's historical-and-doctrinal lens. The two views are complementary; neither is a substitute for the other.
Methodology v1.0. Last updated: 2026-05-18. Published as part of Court Room Phase 4 Wave 3 (v77).
