Payne v. New Mexico

Citations

• 255 U.S. 367
• 41 S. Ct. 333
• 65 L. Ed. 680
• 1921 U.S. LEXIS 1769

Syllabus

<p>1. Under the acts of Congress entitling the State of New Mexico to waive its rights to any place section which has passed to it as school land and subsequently has been inoluded within a public, reservation of the United States, and to select other public land of equal acreage in lieu, the State, having made such waiver and selection in due form, complying with all conditions precedent, acquires a vested right to the selected land which cannot lawfully be canceled or disregarded by the Land Department upon the ground that the base land has since been eliminated from the reservation. P. 370.</p> <p>2. The provision making such a selection “subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Interior,” does not postpone the vesting of the right of the State until the Secretary approves, but empowers and requires him to determine judicially the lawfulness of the selection as of the time when it was made. P. 371.</p> <p>3. Where the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of the General Land Office refused approval of such a lieu selection because, after it was made, the base tract was eliminated from the reservation, held, that the proper injunctive relief, in the courts of the District of Columbia, Was to direct that the selection be disposed of in due course without regard to such elimination, rather than to forbid its cancelation or annulment. P. 373.</p>