Citation. 446 U.S. 500 (1980) · Read the full opinion →
Facts. Under the school land grants made at statehood, Utah was entitled to sections sixteen and thirty-six of every township, with provision for in-lieu selections where those numbered sections were unavailable (because, for example, they had been previously reserved or were mineral lands). When large portions of Utah’s numbered school sections turned out to be encompassed within federal reservations or to be mineral in character, Utah sought to make in-lieu selections of unusually valuable federal lands, including known oil shale tracts. The Secretary of the Interior, Cecil Andrus, asserted authority under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 to refuse selections that would result in “grossly disparate” exchanges of value. Utah challenged that authority.
Holding. The Supreme Court held that the Secretary retained discretion under longstanding federal practice to decline indemnity selections of disproportionately valuable federal lands, but in doing so reaffirmed the essential nature of the school land grants. The Court characterized the grant-and-acceptance arrangement as a “solemn agreement” between the United States and the accepting state, 446 U.S. at 507, and reaffirmed that Congress had imposed on the states a “binding and perpetual obligation” to use the granted lands and their proceeds for public education. The Court read the indemnity provisions in light of the underlying trust, balancing the state’s right to receive value commensurate with what it had lost against the federal government’s interest in not making windfall transfers.
Why it matters. Andrus sits alongside Lassen as the modern Supreme Court statement of the strict trust theory. Two doctrinal contributions are particularly load-bearing. First, the Court’s characterization of the grant as a “solemn agreement” — language echoed by Kanaly v. State, 368 N.W.2d 819, 823 (S.D. 1985), and adopted by state courts across the West — confirms that the grants are contractual in nature, not unilateral and revocable gifts. Second, the Court’s reference to a “binding and perpetual obligation” to use the granted lands for public education forecloses any argument that a state may unilaterally terminate, redirect, or impair the trust corpus. The Montana Supreme Court in Pettibone relied directly on this language. The case is sometimes read narrowly on its specific in-lieu-selection facts, but its broader doctrinal pronouncements have been treated by the state high courts as authoritative restatements of the Lassen line.
Cited in. Routinely cited by the supreme courts of Utah, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Arizona for the propositions that the school land grants constitute a solemn agreement and that the obligation to use the lands and proceeds for public education is binding and perpetual.
Limits of this annotation. This entry is a scholarly summary, not a Shepardized citation analysis, and is not a substitute for current legal research. Readers should verify the case’s continuing validity in their jurisdiction before relying on it in litigation. Last updated: 2026-05-18.
