![]() California was admitted to the Union upon the express condition that it would never interfere with the disposal of federal land. The Constitution empowers the federal government-not state legislatures-to decide when and how federal lands are sold. However, Sessions did say in the actual relevant media release: In the concurrent diatribe, Sessions made no mention of the actual case or controversy at hand: California interfering with the supreme power of the federal government to dispose of federal lands. ![]() (By “cathartic” I mean in the psychological sense of “providing relief through open expression of strong emotions” and not the physiological sense of “accelerating defecation.” However, perhaps Attorney General Sessions got a twofer out of it.) One can only hope that the issuance was cathartic for the embattled (both from above and from the states) attorney general. ![]() Department of Justice (DOJ) not only issued a standard media release announcing this lawsuit but also concurrently released an additional statement by Sessions entitled “ Statement by Attorney General Sessions on Today’s New Lawsuit Against the State of California” in which Sessions-in a mere 426 words-speaks to the resistance of the states, guns, drugs in general, opioids, securing borders from drug traffickers and criminal aliens, national security, cyber security, radical Islamic extremists, patently meritless lawsuits, waste of taxpayer dollars and DOJ resources, ideological judging, forum shopping, procedural delays, the ability of just one of more than six hundred federal district court judges to impede the federal government, limitless and ever-more extreme injunctions, and partisan actors-and mentioning some topics more than once! On April 2, 2018, the United States of America, on behalf of itself and nine federal departments and agencies, filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive reliefin the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California against the State of California, Governor Brown, and the California State Land Commission saying that SB 50 is, in effect, void ab initio. Further, any person who knowingly attempts to record such a conveyance is subject to a fine of up to $5,000.Ī “conveyance” is “ any method, including sale, donation, or exchange, by which all or a portion of the right, title, and interest of the United States in and to federal lands located in California is transferred to another entity” and “federal public lands” include “ surface estate, subsurface estate, or any improvements on those estates,” so SB 50 covers the sale of any federal property, from old post offices to undeveloped natural public lands. SB 50 forbids any county recorder from recording any such deed of conveyance unless it receives a certificate from the SLC waiving its right of first refusal. On October 6, 2017, Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed into law Senate Bill 50, which declares that any “conveyance” of any “federal public lands” is “void ab initio” ( “to be treated as invalid from the outset”) unless the California State Lands Commission(SLC) has been given a right of first refusal to acquire the federal property. I believe California has a better win-loss record than Texas, but we’re still in the early innings.Ĭalifornia’s Recent Bill in Question: Void Ab Initio It must be noted that Texas-where some citizens favor secession (while I support the national government letting Texas again become a sovereign nation or giving it back to Mexico from which it was stolen, I would support another civil war if Texas tried again to leave on its own)- sued the Obama administration forty-eight times. ![]() Tensions between individual states and the United States have been high in previous instances. California (a generally progressive, liberal, and environmentally conscious state) sued the Trump administration (a generally reactionary, illiberal, and environmentally unconscious executive department) twenty-four times in seventeen subject areas in 2017. Tensions between the powers of the states and the federal government are built-in, and conflicts are often resolved using the courts, in particular the federal courts. ![]() The federal constitution granted and reserved certain powers to the federal government and certain powers to state governments, and it prohibited each from having certain powers. The founding fathers, in drafting and approving the United States Constitution, recognized the dual sovereignty of the individual states of and the United States of America. Some Background: Dual Sovereignty and Resulting Tensions ![]()
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