source: Caselaw Access Project

author: Justice Ginsburg Justice Souter,

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text:
    MONTANA et al. v. CROW TRIBE OF INDIANS et al.
    No. 96-1829.
    Argued February 24, 1998

    Decided May 18, 1998

      Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Stevens, Scaua, Kennedy, Thomas, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Souter, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in paid, in which O’Connor, J., joined, post, p. 719.

      Clay R. Smith, Solicitor of Montana, argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Joseph P. Mazurek, Attorney General, James K Torske, Carter G. Phillips, Paul E. Kalb, and Christine A. Cooke.

      Robert S. Pelcyger argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent Crow Tribe of Indians.

      Jeffrey A. Lamken argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Waxman, As

      sistant Attorney General Schiffer, Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler, and James C. Kilbourne

      Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the State of New York et al. by Dennis C. Vacco, Attorney General of New York, Barbara G. Billet, Solicitor General, John W. McConnell, Deputy Solicitor General, and John B. Curdo, Assistant Attorney General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Bill Pryor of Alabama, Bruce M. Botelho of Alaska, Grant Woods of Arizona, Daniel E. Limgren of California, Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Margery S. Bronster of Hawaii, Alan G. Lance of Idaho, Thomas J. Miller of Iowa, Frank J. Kelley of Michigan, Hubert H. Humphrey III of Minnesota, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Don Stenberg of Nebraska, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mark W. Barnett of South Dakota, Jan Graham of Utah, William H. Sorrell of Vermont, Richard Cullen of Virginia, Christine O. Gregoire of Washington, and William U. Hill of Wyoming; and for the National Conference of State Legislatures et al. by Richard Ruda and James I. Crowley.

   Justice Ginsburg

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case originated in 1978 when the Crow Tribe sought to enjoin the State of Montana and its counties from taxing coal extracted from mines held by the United States in trust for the Tribe. Having succeeded in that endeavor, the Tribe and the United States now seek to recover coal-related taxes once paid to the State and counties by Westmoreland Resources, Inc., a nontribal enterprise that mined coal under a lease from the Tribe. We hold that the restitution sought for the Tribe is not warranted.

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Just north of the northern surface boundary of the Crow Reservation in Montana lies the “ceded strip,” approximately 1,137,500 acres of land that was originally part of the reservation. The Tribe ceded the tract to the United States in 1904 for settlement by non-Indians. Act of Apr. 27, 1904, ch. 1624, 33 Stat. 352; see Ash Sheep Co. v. United States, 252 U. S. 159 (1920). Surface interests in the eeded strip were thereafter conveyed to non-Indians, but the United States holds rights to minerals underlying the strip in trust for the Tribe. Since 1904, the State and the Counties of Big Horn, Treasure, and Yellowstone have exercised full legal authority and responsibility for public services on the eeded strip, and the Tribe has not exercised civil jurisdiction over this area. See Crow Tribe v. Montana, 650 F. 2d 1104, 1107 (CA9 1981) (noting the Court of Appeals’ understanding, in Little Light v. Crist, 649 F. 2d 683, 685 (CA9 1981), that “the ceded area is not a part of the reservation”).

In 1972, with the approval of the Department of the Interior and pursuant to the Indian Mineral Leasing Act of 1938 (IMLA), 52 Stat. 347, 25 U. S. C. § 396a et seq., Westmoreland Resources, a non-Indian company, entered into a mining lease with the Tribe for coal underlying approximately 31,000 acres of the eeded strip. After executing the 1972 lease, Westmoreland signed contracts with its customers, four Midwest utility companies, allowing Westmoreland to pass on the cost of valid taxes to the utilities. Westmore-land began mining the coal in the spring of 1974.

In November 1974, Westmoreland and the Tribe renegotiated the 1972 lease. The renegotiated royalties were recognized at the time as being among the highest in the United States. Crow Tribe v. United States, 657 F. Supp. 573, 587 (Mont. 1985); see App. 376 (testimony of Westmoreland’s president that the renegotiated royalty was “by far the highest royalty that was being paid in the nation”). A settlement agreement attending the 1974 renegotiation stated that the Tribe found the amended lease and associated documents “satisfactory in that they provide the financial, economic and social protections that the Tribe deems necessary.” Id., at 44. The amended lease and the royalties for which it provided had an extendable term of ten years, running from June 14,1972. Id., at 8. Pursuant to the lease, Westmore-land paid the Tribe almost $18 million in royalties through October 1983. Crow Tribe v. United States, 657 F. Supp., at 588.

In July 1975, the State imposed a severance tax and a gross proceeds tax on all coal produced in Montana, including coal underlying the reservation proper and the ceded strip. See Mont. Code Ann. §§ 15-23-701 to 15-23-704, 15-35-101 to 15-35-111 (1979). The severance tax rate applicable to the ceded strip coal was 30 percent of the contract sales price of the coal extracted; the gross proceeds tax rate was approximately 5 percent of the contract sales price. During the relevant periods, Westmoreland paid approximately $46.8 million in severance taxes to the State and $11.4 million in gross proceeds taxes to Big Horn County. Westmoreland paid these taxes without timely pursuit of the procedures Montana law provides for protests and refunds. App. to Pet. for Cert. 37; see also Tr. of Oral Arg. 13-14. The company subsequently agreed, in exchange for $50,000, to dismiss with prejudice any claim of entitlement to a refund of the severance or gross proceeds taxes it had paid to the State or Big Horn County. App. to Pet. for Cert. 37; see also App. 294-296.

In January 1976; some six months after the State imposed its coal taxes, the Tribal Council adopted an ordinance setting out a Crow Tribal Coal Taxation Code. Id., at 79-86. The Tribe’s code imposed a 25 percent severance tax on “all persons engaged in or carrying on the business of coal mining within the boundaries of the Crow Indian Reservation].” Id., at 81; see also id., at 97-98. Reservation boundaries, as described in the code, included the coal beneath the ceded strip. Id., at 81. Under the Tribe’s constitution, the tax adopted by the Tribal Council was subject to review by the Department of the Interior. Id., at 329.

In January 1977, the Department approved the Tribe’s code “to the extent that it applied to coal underlying the Crow Reservation proper.” Id., at 98. Because of a limitation in the Tribe’s constitution, however, the Department “disapproved the tax to the extent that it applied to the Crow Tribe’s coal in the ceded strip.” Id., at 153; see also id., at 217-218, 329, In 1982, the Tribe again enacted a tax for coal mined on the ceded strip, and again the Department rejected the tax. See Crow Tribe v. Montana, 819 F. 2d 895, 897 (CA9 1987). According to the Superintendent of the Crow Agency, Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department continued to withhold permission for extension of the Tribe’s tax to the ceded area because the Tribe’s constitution “disclaimed jurisdiction outside the boundaries of the reservation.” App. 218. The Tribe endeavored to amend its constitution to satisfy the Department’s objection; it did not petition for court review of the Department’s refusal to approve extension of the Tribe’s tax to the ceded strip.

B

The Tribe brought a federal action against Montana and Montana counties in 1978, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against imposition of the State’s severance and gross proceed taxes on coal belonging to the Tribe. The State’s taxes, the Tribe alleged, were preempted by the IMLA and infringed on the Tribe’s right to govern itself. The District Court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Crow Tribe v. Montana, 469 F. Supp. 154 (Mont. 1979). The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. 650 F. 2d 1104 (1981), amended, 665 F. 2d 1390 (1982) (Crow I). It held that the Tribe’s allegations, if proved, would establish that the IMLA preempted Montana’s taxes, 650 F. 2d, at 1113-1115, and that the taxes impermissibly infringed upon the Tribe’s sovereignty, id., at 1115-1117.

While the Ninth Circuit trained on the nonmonetary claim the Tribe was then pursuing, one for declaratory and injunc-tive relief to stop the imposition of Montana’s taxes, the Court of Appeals noted: “As to the taxes already paid by Westmoreland ... it is true that the Tribe has not paid any of the taxes and is apparently not entitled to any refund if the tax statutes are declared invalid.” Id., at 1113, n. 13. The Ninth Circuit further observed that the Tribe’s own attempt “to tax its lessees’ coal production was partially frustrated by the Secretary of the Interior’s refusal to sanction the Tribe’s tax ordinances insofar as they applied to coal production on the ceded strip.” Id., at 1115, n. 19.

In July 1982, after the Crow I decision, the Tribe and Westmoreland entered into an amended lease agreement, approved by the Interior Department that September. Under the amended arrangement, Westmoreland agreed to pay the Tribe a tax equal to the State’s then-existing taxes, less any tax payments Westmoreland was required to make to the State and its subdivisions. See App. 135-141; see also id., at 329-330. The 1982 agreement achieved, prospectively, the federal permission the Tribe had long sought. It allowed the Tribe to have an approved tax in place so that, if successful in the litigation against Montana, the Tribe could claim for itself any tax amounts Westmoreland might be ordered to pay into the District Court’s registry pendente lite. Correspondingly, the agreement enabled Westmoreland to avoid double taxation, present and future, and it absolved the company from any tax payment obligation to the Tribe for the 1976-1982 period. App. to Pet. for Cert. 32-35.

In November 1982, in keeping with their amended lease agreement, the Tribe and Westmoreland jointly filed a motion to deposit severance tax payments into the District Court’s registry, pending resolution of the controversy over Montana’s authority to tax coal mined at the ceded strip. Id., at 32. In January 1983, the District Court granted the motion. Thereafter, Westmoreland paid the Montana severance tax into the court’s registry in lieu of paying the State. The District Court granted the same interim relief, in November 1987, for the gross proceeds tax. Id., at 35, 36. In ordering the registry deposits, which ultimately would be paid over, with interest, to the prevailing party (Montana or the Tribe), the District Court recalled the Ninth Circuit’s observation that “the Tribe is apparently not entitled to any refund of taxes previously paid by Westmoreland to Montana.” App. 213 (citing Crow I, 650 F. 2d, at 1113, n. 13). The provisional remedy attended to that concern; it “preserve[d the District Court’s] power ... [to give post-1982] tax moneys to their rightful owner after a trial on the merits.” App. 215.

In June 1983, the United States intervened on behalf of the Tribe to protect its interests as trustee of the coal upon which Montana’s taxes were levied. Trial took place in January 1984, after which the District Court concluded that federal law did not preempt the State’s taxes on coal underlying the ceded strip. Crow Tribe v. United States, 657 F. Supp. 573 (Mont. 1985). The Ninth Circuit again reversed. Crow Tribe v. Montana, 819 F. 2d 895 (1987) (Crow II). Montana’s taxes, as applied to the ceded strip coal, the Court of Appeals held, were both “preempted by federal law and policies,” as reflected in the IMLA, and “void for interfering with tribal self-government.” Id., at 903. Explaining its decision, the Ninth Circuit stressed these considerations: The Tribe had a vital interest in the development of its coal resources, id., at 899, 901; the State’s taxes had “at least some negative impact on the . . . marketability [of the Tribe’s coal],” id., at 900; Montana’s coal tax exactions were not “narrowly tailored” to serve only the State’s “legitimate” interests, id., at 902. Montana appealed, and this Court summarily affirmed. 484 U. S. 997 (1988).

When the case returned to the District Court in 1988, the Tribe sought an order directing release of the funds held in the court’s registry. Montana did not object but, in a new twist, Westmoreland did. The company, for the first time in this protracted litigation, asserted that neither Montana nor the Tribe qualified for receipt of the funds. Montana was out because the Ninth Circuit had declared the State’s taxes preempted. The Tribe, according to Westmoreland, did not have a valid tax law in place even in the years following 1982 — the fund deposit period — for want of proper Interior Department approval. Therefore, Westmoreland urged, the company should receive back all deposited funds.

Rejecting Westmoreland’s novel claim of entitlement to the deposited funds, the District Court observed that the Ninth Circuit, in Crow I, 650 F. 2d, at 1117, and Crow II, 819 F. 2d, at 898, had characterized the minerals underlying the ceded strip as a “ ‘component of the Reservation land itself.’ ” App. 286. It follows, the District Court next said, that the tax approved for the reservation proper in 1977, see supra, at 703, covered the strip as well, and the Interior Department had erred in ever opining otherwise, App. 286. As to Westmoreland’s operations on the strip, the District Court further stated, the Crow tax had been modified by the 1982 agreement amending the lease. Id., at 287; see supra, at 704-705. That 1982 Tribe-Westmoreland accord controlled, the District Court concluded, rendering the amount deposited payable to the Tribe, and not to Westmoreland. Shortly thereafter, the District Court ordered distribution of funds in its registry to the United States, as trustee for the Tribe. App. 288-291.

Having secured exclusively for the Tribe’s benefit West-moreland’s post-1982 tax payments once held in the District Court’s registry, the United States and the Tribe commenced the fray now before us.. Filing amended complaints against Montana and Big Horn County, they invoked theories of as-sumpsit and constructive trust in support of prayers to recover some $58.2 million in state and county taxes paid by Westmoreland prior to the 1983 and 1987 orders directing deposits into the court’s registry. App. to Pet. for Cert. 243-260. These complaints alleged that, because the State and Big Horn County had collected taxes from Westmoreland in violation of federal law, it would be unjust and inequitable to allow them to retain the funds. In “equity and good conscience,” the United States and the Tribe urged, Montana should pay over for the benefit of the Tribe all moneys illegally collected, together with interest thereon. .See id., at 249-250,258-259. Neither the Tribe nor the United States requested, as additional or alternate relief, recovery for the Tribe’s actual financial losses attributable to the State’s taxes.

Montana moved for summary judgment, arguing, inter alia, that any refund right that may have existed belonged to Westmoreland, as payer of the taxes in question. Id., at 72. The District Court, in December 1990, denied Montana’s motion on the ground that full airing of the parties’ positions was in order. Id., at 67-85.

On Montana’s application, the District Court certified for interlocutory appeal, pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1292(b), the question whether summary judgment for the State was properly denied. Id., at 61-66. The Ninth Circuit, in 1991, initially granted permission for the interlocutory appeal, but one year later, in 1992, dismissed the appeal as improvidently granted. Crow Tribe v. Montana, 969 F. 2d 848 (Crow III). In dismissing the appeal, the Ninth Circuit commented that the “sole issue” presented was whether the Tribe and the United States, although they did not pay the Montana taxes, were nevertheless positioned to state a claim for relief in assumpsit and constructive trust. That issue, the Ninth Circuit said, “was already addressed” in Crow II. The Court of Appeals then recited passages from Crow II indicating why that court had determined that “The state tax[es] threatened] Congress’ overriding objective of encouraging tribal self-government and economic development.’” 969 F. 2d, at 848-849 (quoting Crow II, 819 F. 2d, at 903).

C

The District Court conducted a trial in April and May 1994 to determine whether coal taxes paid by Westmoreland to Montana and its counties in the years 1975-1982 unjustly enriched the State and its subdivisions at the expense of the Tribe. In detailed findings and conclusions, that court explained why, in its judgment, the disgorgement remedy sought by the Tribe was not appropriate. App. to Pet. for Cert. 17-38, 42-54.

The Tribe’s case rested on three principal points: first, the fact, settled in Crow I, that the coal underlying the ceded strip was a mineral resource of the Tribe; second, the federal policy favoring tribal self-government and economic development; finally, the Ninth Circuit’s preemption decision. Critical to the preemption decision, the District Court recognized, was the Court of Appeals’ determination that “Montana’s coal taxes burdened the Tribe’s economic interests by increasing the costs of production by coal producers, which reduced royalties received by the Tribe.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 45 (citing Crow II, 819 F. 2d, at 899).

Counterbalancing the Tribe’s case, the District Court observed first that the State and its subdivisions, not the Tribe, provided “[pjublic services to residents and businesses on the [c]eded [sjtrip, many of which facilitate the mining of coal.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 47; see supra, at 701,703, n. 5. Key to the District Court’s reasoning, however, was the respective taxing authority of State and Tribe.

In a decision rendered two years after the Ninth Circuit’s Crow II preemption decision, this Court held that both State and Tribe may impose severance taxes on on-reservation oil and gas production by a non-Indian lessee. Cotton Petroleum Corp. v. New Mexico, 490 U. S. 163 (1989). Cotton Petroleum indicated that Montana’s taxes on ceded strip coal were invalidated, not because the State lacked power to tax the coal at all, but because the taxes at issue were “extraordinarily high.” Id., at 186-187, n. 17.

The Tribe’s exercise of taxing authority, on the other hand, required approval from the Secretary of the Interior, and that approval had not been obtained in the relevant period, 1976-1982. See supra, at 703-704. In 1988, the District Court had determined that the Interior Department’s refusal to approve the Tribe’s tax on the ceded strip was an error, see supra, at 707, but the presence of the state taxes did not cause that error. App. to Pet. for Cert. 36. Rather, the Department initially questioned the Tribe’s authority to tax on the ceded strip and later pointed to the Tribe’s noneompli-anee with the proper procedures for amending its constitution to impose the tax. Id., at 36-37.

Accorded weight in the District Court’s evaluation, West-moreland would not have paid coal taxes to the Tribe prior to 1983, for Interior Department approval was essential to allow pass-through to the company’s customers. Id., at 35. Furthermore, under the 1982 lease agreement, see supra, at 704-705, the Tribe and Westmoreland stipulated that Westmoreland would have no tax liability to the Tribe for the 1976-1982 period. App. to Pet. for Cert. 36. Moreover, the deposited funds, Westmoreland’s post-1982 tax payments, had been turned over in full to the United States for the benefit of the Tribe. Ibid.; see supra, at 705-707.

The District Court further noted that Westmoreland did not timely endeavor to recover taxes paid to the State and counties, and that the Tribe did nothing to prompt West-moreland to initiate appropriate proceedings for refunds. App. to Pet. for Cert. 50-51. In that regard, the District Court recalled the Court of Appeals’ statement in Crow I that “ ‘as to the taxes already paid by Westmoreland,... the Tribe ... is apparently not entitled to any refund if the tax statutes are declared invalid.’” App. to Pet. for Cert. 53 (quoting Crow I, 650 F. 2d, at 1113, n. 13).

Concerning the negative effect of Montana’s taxes on the marketability of coal produced in Montana, the District Court entertained additional evidence, supplementing the evidence offered ten years earlier. Westmoreland’s president testified that “he could not identify any utility contracts lost during the relevant time period due to Montana’s coal taxes,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 29, and the parties’ economic experts presented conflicting testimony on the impact of Montana’s taxes on the sale of Montana coal. The District Court described the conflicting positions, but made no findings on the matter. Id., at 29-30.

Satisfied that the factors justifying preemption did not impel the disgorgement relief demanded by the Tribe, that under Cotton Petroleum, the State could impose a reasonably sized severance tax, and that the State, though enriched by Westmoreland’s tax payments, did not gain that enrichment unjustly at the expense of the Tribe, the District Court refused to order that Montana coal taxes collected between 1975 and 1982 be remitted to the Tribe.

The Ninth Circuit again reversed the District Court’s judgment; in a per curiam opinion, the Court of Appeals read its prior opinions to require the relief the Tribe demanded, i. e., an order directing the State and county to disgorge approximately $58.2 million in coal taxes paid by Westmoreland to Montana and its subdivisions before Westmoreland began making payments into the District Court’s registry. 92 F. 3d 826, amended, 98 F. 3d 1194 (1996) (Crow TV). Acknowledging “the absence of traditional requirements for relief under theories of assumpsit or constructive trust,” 92 F. 3d, at 828, the Court of Appeals remanded for entry of the disgorgement order. That court left to the District Court only the “unresolved requests] for prejudgment interest [and attorney’s fees].” Id., at 830-831.

In the Ninth Circuit’s view, the District Court had not adhered to the “law of this case,” id., at 828, and had therefore abused its discretion, id., at 830. In particular, the Court of Appeals faulted the District Court for giving undue weight to the fact that Westmoreland rather than the Tribe had paid the taxes, id., at 828-829, and to the fact, made plain by this Court in Cotton Petroleum, 490 U. S., at 176-187, that “similar [state] taxes are not always preempted,” Crow IV, 92 F. 3d, at 829. Further, the Ninth Circuit discounted the public services Montana provided at the ceded strip because “the State would have provided such services even if the Tribal coal had not been mined.” Ibid. Finally, the Court of Appeals attributed to the District Court a finding that Westmoreland “would have paid the tribal tax even without [the Interior Department’s] approval because [Westmore-land] agreed to do so in its 1982 lease.” Id., at 830; see also ibid. (‘Westmoreland was willing to pay coal taxes to the Tribe as early as 1976, so there was no reason for the [District Court] to distinguish between the taxes collected before and after 1982.”).

We granted certiorari, 522 U. S. 912 (1997), and now reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

II

A

The petition for certiorari presents the question whether the Tribe — or the United States as its trustee — may recover state and county taxes imposed on and paid by the Tribe’s mineral lessee, Westmoreland, a party who has forfeited entitlement to a tax refund. Taxpayer Westmoreland, it is undisputed, did not qualify for a refund because the company failed to pursue protest and claim procedures within the time Montana law prescribes. Further, Westmoreland entered into a settlement with the State and the county relinquishing any claim it might have had for return of the tax payments in question. See supra, at 702.

As a rule, a nontaxpayer may not sue for a refund of taxes paid by another. See, e. g., Furman Univ. v. Livingston, 136 S. E. 2d 254, 256, 244 S. C. 200, 204 (1964); Krauss Co. v. Develle, 236 La. 1072, 1077, 110 So. 2d 104, 106 (1959); Kesbec, Inc. v. McGoldrick, 278 N. Y. 293, 297, 16 N. E. 2d 288, 290 (1938); cf. United States v. California, 507 U. S. 746, 752 (1993). The Ninth Circuit evidently had that rule in mind when it noted, in Crow I, that the Tribe “is apparently not entitled to any refund” of taxes Westmoreland had paid to Montana. 650 F. 2d, at 1113, n. 13.

The Tribe now maintains, however, that the disgorgement remedy approved by the Ninth Circuit does not fall within the “refund” category. The Tribe suggests two ways of analyzing its claim. First, Westmoreland was liable for tax payments, but it paid the wrong sovereign; the Tribe, not the State, should have been the recipient of those payments. Second, the State’s taxes adversely affected the Tribe’s economy by reducing the demand for the Tribe’s coal and the royalties the Tribe could charge; a remedial order transferring Westmoreland’s 1975-1982 tax payments from Montana to the Tribe would eliminate the enrichment unjustly gained by the State at the Tribe’s expense.

Before inspecting the Tribe’s justifications for the disgorgement ordered by the Court of Appeals, we place in clear view a pathmarking decision this Court rendered less than two years after our summary affirmance in Crow II. In Cotton Petroleum Corp. v. New Mexico, 490 U. S. 163 (1989), we held that the IMLA did not preempt New Mexico’s nondiscriminatory severance taxes on the production of oil and gas on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation by Cotton Petroleum, a non-Indian lessee. Id., at 186-187. In so holding, we acknowledged that the same on-reservation production of oil and gas was subject to tribal severance taxes, id., at 167-169, and that New Mexico’s taxes might reduce demand for on-reservation leases, id., at 186-187. Cotton Petroleum clarified that neither the IMLA, nor any other federal law, categorically preempts state mineral severance taxes imposed, without discrimination, on all extraction enterprises in the State, including on-reservation operations. “Unless and until Congress provides otherwise, each of the . . . two sovereigns[ — State and Tribe — ]has taxing jurisdiction over all [on-reservation production].” Id., at 189.

The Court in Cotton Petroleum distinguished Grow II in a footnote referring to the Solicitor General’s representation that Montana’s taxes were “extraordinarily high” and the Ninth Circuit’s recognition that “the state taxes had a negative effect on the marketability of coal produced in Montana.” 490 U. S., at 186-187, n. 17. Montana, Cotton Petroleum thus indicates, had the power to tax Grow coal, but not at an exorbitant rate. See id., at 187, n. 17 (according to the Tribe’s expert, Montana’s rate was “ 'more than twice that of any other state’s coal taxes’”). We examine the Tribe’s disgorgement claim in light of Cotton Petroleum, a decision on the books before the Tribe (and the United States) filed their current claims for restitution.

B

We consider first the argument that the Tribe, not Montana, should have received Westmoreland’s 1975-1982 coal tax payments; therefore the proper remedy is to require the State to turn all taxes it collected from Westmoreland over to the Tribe. As authority, the Tribe and the United States rely on eases typified by Valley County v. Thomas, 109 Mont. 345, 97 P. 2d 345 (1939). That ease involved a Montana law providing for the licensing of motor vehicles by the county in which the vehicle is owned and taxable. Valley County claimed that McCone County was unlawfully issuing licenses, and collecting license fees, for vehicles owned and taxable within Valley County. Valley sued McCone for both injunc-tive and monetary relief. The Montana Supreme Court held that if Montana’s vehicle licensing law made Valley, not Mc-Cone, the county entitled to issue the licenses in question, then Valley could recover from McCone the fees McCone improperly collected. It would make scant sense, the court reasoned, to hold instead that Valley should “exact the . . . license fee anew from the [vehicle] owner, leaving the latter to his remedy, if any, for the illegal exaction.” Id., at 385-386, 97 P. 2d, at 366.

As the District Court in this case correctly recognized, App. to Pet. for Cert. 49-50, the Valley County pattern is not the one presented here. There, the Montana licensing statute bound both counties. One, and not the other, was the sole subdivision authorized to issue the license and collect the fee. Here, as Cotton Petroleum makes plain, neither the State nor the Tribe enjoys authority to tax to the total exclusion of the other. Moreover, dispositively distancing the Tribe’s situation from that of the prevailing subdivision in Valley County, the Tribe itself could not have taxed lessee Westmoreland during the period in question, for the Interior Department (whether wrongly or rightly) had withheld the essential permission.

It bears repetition that the Department did not approve the Tribe’s imposition of a coal tax on ceded strip production until September 1982, see supra, at 705, that the Tribe never sought judicial review of the Department’s pre-1982 disap-provals, see supra, at 703-704, that Westmoreland would pay no tax to the Tribe absent Department approval, see supra, at 706, 710, 713, n. 18, that Montana’s taxes did not impede the Tribe from gaining the Department’s clearance, see supra, at 710, and that Montana received no share of the post-1982 tax payments released from the District Court’s registry, see supra, at 705-707. These were factors the District Court correctly considered significant in holding disgorgement an exorbitant, and therefore inequitable, remedy.

C

The negative impact of Montana’s high taxes on the marketability of the Tribe’s coal, as the District Court correctly . comprehended, was the principal basis for the Ninth Circuit’s Crow II preemption decision. See supra, at 709. The Tribe and the United States urge that impact as an alternative justification for requiring Montana to disgorge taxes collected from Westmoreland from 1975 through 1982.

At oral argument, counsel for the Tribe clarified that the impact of concern was not coal that went unsold because the State’s tax made the price too high. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 37. Instead, the Tribe’s disgorgement claim rested on the coal “actually produced and sold”; by taxing that coal, counsel maintained, Montana “deprived [the Tribe] of its fair share of the economic rent.” Ibid.

Again, however, the Tribe itself could not have exaete.d a tax from Westmoreland before 1983, because the Interior Department withheld approval. And the royalty the Tribe and Westmoreland agreed upon in 1974 was both high and long term, running until June 1982. See supra, at 701-702. No evidence suggests Westmoreland would have paid higher royalties, but for Montana’s tax. It merits emphasis also, as the District Court recognized, App. to Pet. for Cert. 46, 50, that under our Cotton Petroleum decision, Montana could have imposed a severance tax, albeit not one so extraordinarily high. See Cotton Petroleum, 490 U. S., at 186-187 (New Mexico’s oil and gas severance taxes imposed on on-reservation production, amounting to about 8 percent of the value of the taxpayer’s production, were not preempted by federal law although the taxes could be expected to have “at least a marginal effect on the demand for on-reservation leases, the value to the Tribe of those leases, and the ability of the Tribe to increase its tax rate”).

The District Court did not consider awarding the Tribe, in lieu of all the 1975-1982 taxes Montana collected, damages based on actual losses the Tribe suffered. We cannot call this an oversight. The complaint contained no prayer for compensatory damages. See supra, at 707-708, and nn. 7,8. Nor did the proof establish entitlement to such relief. See supra, at 711.

The only testimony homing in on Westmoreland’s sales came from the company’s president. He could “identify [no] utility contracts lost during the relevant time period due to Montana’s coal taxes.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 29. While he acknowledged that some customers “exereise[d] the payment option under their contracts rather than continuing to receive coal and that the Montana coal taxes were probably a factor,” he identified as other factors “demand, alternative sources, and transportation.” Ibid. Indeed, as just noted, see supra this page, the Tribe concentrated on disgorgement as the desired remedy; it deliberately sought “no damages . . . now” for “coal that was not sold because the price was too high [due to] the State’s tax.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 87. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(e), therefore, could not aid the Tribe. That Rule instructs that “every final judgment shall grant the relief to which the party in whose favor it is rendered is entitled, even if the party has not demanded such relief in the party’s pleadings.” The Tribe, however, had not shown entitlement to actual damages.

In sum, the District Court carefully and fairly determined that the disgorgement demanded was not warranted and should not be granted. In so ruling, that court endeavored to heed both Crow II and Cotton Petroleum, and closely attended to the history of and record in this tangled, long-pending ease. See supra, at 708, n. 8. Proceeding as it did, the District Court ignored no tenable “law of the case” and did not indulge in an “abuse of discretion.” See Crow IV, 92 F. 3d, at 829, 830.

As a result of the District Court’s orders for registry deposits, see swpra, at 705, the Tribe has displaced Montana to this extent: With respect to ceded strip mining operations, all severance taxes have gone to the Tribe since January 1983, and all gross proceeds taxes since November 1987. Montana’s retention of preregistry deposit taxes must be assessed in light of the court-ordered distribution of all funds in the registry to the United States, as trustee for the Tribe. See supra, at 707. The District Court, best positioned to make that assessment, was obliged to do so based on the ease and proof the parties presented. The Tribe and the United States here argued for total disgorgement. They did not develop a case for relief of a different kind or size. While we do not foreclose the District Court from any course the Federal Rules and that court’s thorough grasp on this litigation lead it to take, we are satisfied that the Court of Appeals improperly overturned the District Court’s judgment.

‡ * Hi

For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice Souter,

with whom Justice O’Connor joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

The Court’s meticulous treatment of this exhausting litigation, including its discussion of the way Cotton Petroleum Corp. v. New Mexico, 490 U. S. 163, 186, n. 17 (1989), bears on Crow Tribe v. Montana, 819 F. 2d 895 (CA9 1987) (Grow II), summarily aff’d, 484 U. S. 997 (1988), shows the error of requiring disgorgement to the Crow Tribe of all Montana taxes collected from Westmoreland based on coal mined from the ceded strip between 1976 and 1982. As the Court explains, ante, at 715, Cotton Petroleum makes clear that the taxes were objectionable not because the State was wholly disentitled to tax the Tribe’s coal operation, but because the “ ‘extraordinarily high’ ” taxes affecting the marketability of the Tribe’s coal were simply excessive. 490 U. S., at 186-187, n. 17. Since Montana was free to levy and collect the portion of taxes below the threshold of excessiveness, I concur in the Court’s decision to reverse the judgment and remand for further proceedings.

If the Court stopped there, the Court of Appeals would be free to set the stage for the District Court to engage in serious weighing of a claim to partial disgorgement under the Tribe’s complaint, which, as now amended, seeks disgorgement of all moneys “illegally collected.” Although this request for relief was originally predicated on a reading of Crow II that Cotton Petroleum shows was too expansive, the Tribe’s prayer naturally encompasses the lesser claim to disgorgement of any taxes in excess of the State’s limit.

It would be open to the Court of Appeals, further, to indicate that nothing done either by the Department of the Interior or by the Tribe raised a dispositive bar to the Tribe’s claim to pre-1983 revenues, contrary to what the District Court had suggested, App. to Pet. for Cert. 36-87, leaving that latter court free to determine what had been excessive and to reweigh the equities. After considering what the Tribe had already received, among the other relevant facts, the District Court might require disgorgement of all, some, or none of the excessive taxes for the period before 1983.

The Court impedes any such exercise of trial court discretion, however, if it does not entirely foreclose it. Although the Court says that it does not “foreclose the District Court from any course the Federal Rules and that court’s thorough grasp on this litigation lead it to take” when the case is returned to it, ante, at 719, the Court’s conclusions effectively thwart application of one of the principal rules of restitution that should be brought to bear on this case. It is from the resulting truncation of the District Court’s discretion that I respectfully dissent.

Although both Montana and the Tribe may tax the value of the coal on its extraction or severance from the land, ante, at 714-715, Montana may tax only to a certain economic point. Beyond that point, as between Montana and the Tribe, only the Tribe may add to the tax burden. When a taxing authority like Montana has taxed unlawfully to the prejudice of another jurisdiction that should have received the revenue in payment of its own lawful tax, accepted principles of restitution entitle the latter government to claim disgorgement of what the former had no business receiving. At the most general level, a “person who has been unjustly enriched at the expense of another is required to make restitution to the other.” Restatement of Restitution §1, p. 12 (1937). At a more specific level, there is the rule that “[wjhere a person has paid money... to another in the erroneous belief, induced by mistake of fact, that he owed a duty to the other so to do, whereas such duty was owed to a third, person, the transferee... is under a duty of restitution to the third person.” Id., § 126(1), at 514. The Supreme Court of Montana has accordingly held, as the majority recognizes, ante, at 715-716, that as between two jurisdictions claiming to tax the same transaction, one that collected taxes without lawful authority must surrender them to the other one, entitled to impose them, Valley County v. Thomas, 109 Mont. 345, 97 P. 2d 345 (1939); see also, e. g., College Park v. Eastern Airlines, Inc., 250 Ga. 741, 742-744, 300 S. E. 2d 513, 515-516 (1983) (invoking “general equitable principles of restitution,” including § 126(1), to hold that one municipality may recover taxes mistakenly paid to another); Indian Hill v. Atkins, 153 Ohio St. 562, 566-567, 93 N. E. 2d 22, 25 (1950) (citing § 126(1) and authorizing suit by one town to recover taxes paid to another); School Dist. No. 6 v. School Dish No. 5, 255 Mich. 428, 429, 238 N. W. 214, 215 (1931) (authorizing suit to recover taxes paid to wrong school district because “[t]hrough breach of the law, plaintiff and its taxpayers have been deprived of their just due, and defendant has money which in equity and good conscience belongs to plaintiff”); Balkan v. Buhl, 158 Minn. 271, 279, 197 N. W. 266, 269 (1924) (“[T]o permit defendant to retain any of the taxes wrongfully collected by it from its neighbor’s territory, would be to permit it to benefit from its own wrong .... Such a result is so objectional as to require no discussion beyond its bare statement”). Under Montana’s own law, then, reflecting accepted principles of restitution, the Tribe raises at least a facially valid claim when it seeks disgorgement of the excess taxes collected by the State in the period before 1983.

Although the Court seeks to differentiate this case from the ambit of Valley County, the proffered distinctions come up short. First, it is not to the point that in Valley County only one jurisdiction could validly tax, whereas here both may do so, ante, at 716. The remaining element of the Tribe’s claim against Montana goes only to the state revenues that might be found to have exceeded the limit of valid state taxation; beyond the point at which state taxation became excessive the State had no authority, while the Tribe did. (It is true, of course, that in this case the respective spheres of the two taxing jurisdictions are bounded by an economic, not a geographic, line. But that distinction does not affect the principle involved, and the Court does not argue otherwise.)

Second, Valley County is not distinguishable on the ground that the governmental claimant there had an enforceable licensing and revenue scheme in place, whereas the Tribe “could not have taxed lessee Westmoreland during the period in question, for the Interior Department (whether wrongly or rightly) had withheld the essential permission,” ante, at 716. The District Court’s original ruling, acknowledged in its most recent opinion and never challenged by Montana, was that the Tribe “at all relevant times ... had a valid coal mining tax applicable to Westmoreland’s mining on the Ceded Strip.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 36. After the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in Crow II that the mineral estate beneath the surface of the ceded strip was a part of the Tribe’s reservation, 819 F. 2d, at 898, the District Court observed:

“This analysis of the Reservation status of the Crow coal compels the conclusion that the approval which the Department of the Interior gave to the 1976 tax ordinance was fully applicable to Westmoreland’s mining of Crow Ceded Strip coal because that coal was and is a component of the Reservation land itself. The approval of the Department of Interior of the 1976 Crow Tribal Tax Code as it applied to activities on the Reservation was necessarily an approval of that tax as being applicable to Westmoreland’s mining of Crow Tribal coal. Accordingly, the Interior Department’s purported refusal to approve the tax as it might apply to any mining operation on the Ceded Strip was based on what the Ninth Circuit has found to be a mistaken interpretation of the applicable law.” App. 286.

Thus, the Tribe’s provision must now be recognized as valid for the period in question, and there is no apparent reason why the Tribe should be disqualified from seeking to obtain the State’s excess revenues that should have gone to the Tribe under the Tribe’s own tax regulation. While the Tribe could not have enforced the tax against Westmoreland without the Interior Department’s approval, that is neither here nor there as between the Tribe and the State. And although the Tribe failed to obtain judicial review of the Department’s refusal, that has no bearing on the equity of the State’s retention of money to which it never had a valid claim. That is, there is no apparent reason to hold that the originally unlitigated third-party mistake of the Interior Department should affect the restitution claim as between two rival taxing authorities, one of which was clearly entitled to tax but got nothing, the other of which was entitled to nothing by way of excess taxes, but has pocketed the money anyway.

Third, despite a suggestion in the Court’s opinion, ante, at 710, 716, Valley County is not rendered inapposite by the Tribe’s 1982 agreement with Westmoreland. So far as it matters here, that agreement simply capped Westmoreland’s tax burden at the limit imposed by Montana’s then-current taxing scheme and did not purport to govern any claim the Tribe might have against the State.

To reject the Court’s attempts to distinguish this case from Valley County is not, of course, to deny that any distinction exists. In fact, there is a significant difference between the two situations, and one that may prevent the door from closing entirely against the pre-1983 claim. In Valley County and the comparable cases, the disgorgement issue turned on the relative merits of the competing jurisdictions’ claims of entitlement to impose a tax; neither rival government had any interest in the property or activity taxed except that of a taxing authority. In this case, however, that is not so, for the Tribe that sought to tax the extraction of the coal was also the owner of the coal before the extraction. Thus, any tribal taxation was merely a way to recover or retain some of the value of the Tribe’s own property (a fact unaffected by the favoz’able terms of the Tribe’s royalty agreement with Westmoreland, see ante, at 717); so, too, Montana’s receipt of the excess taxation (passed on by West-moreland) was an appropriation of the Tribe’s own property, just as it was an invalid counterpart of the tax collection that would have been rightful by the Tribe. The Ninth Circuit recognized this when it found that "Montana made plain its intention to appropriate most of the economic rent” of the Tribe’s coal. See Crow Tribe v. Montana, 650 F. 2d 1104, 1113 (1981). Because the Tribe’s claim may properly be viewed in this light, we can put to one side any questions whether the Court is right, or I am, about the significance of the error by the Department of the Interior or the point-for-point applicability of Valley County. We may bypass the principles specific to claims between contending taxing authorities entirely and simply ask whether something in this record would in practical terms defeat the Tribe’s claim to disgorgement of its own property taken in the form of excess taxes. The Court’s answer to this question is uncertain. The Court endorses the view that some degree of disgorgement would have been “exorbitant,” ante, at 716, and “compensatory damages” unjustified, ante, at 718, and it suggests that the District Court’s previous award to the Tribe of all taxes paid into the registry after 1982 amounted to a windfall big enough to provide at least rough restitution for the excessive share of taxes collected in the preceding six years. Ante, at 716, 719. At the same time, the Court says it imposes no bar to the possibility of further remedial action in the trial court. Perhaps the Court sees the windfall only when it regards the Tribe as one of two rival taxing authorities, as distinct from the Tribe as a property owner that has suffered as such. I trust that this distinction is open for exploration and development upon remand. Whether the Tribe is equitably entitled to a penny more than it has now, I do not know, but I think it is clear that nothing in this record disentitles the Tribe at least to press for disgorgement of some or all of Montana’s pre-1983 excess tax revenues.

       Westmoreland’s president contrasted the 35 and 40 cents per ton royalties Westmoreland had agreed to pay the Tribe with federal royalties which were “at that time ... 17 and a half cents a ton, maybe 20 cents a ton.” App. 375-376.

       The Montana Legislature, post-1985, inei’ementally reduced the severance tax rate to 15 percent of the contract sales price. App. to Pet. for Cert. 25.

       For the severance tax, the relevant period is 1975-1982, and for the gross proceeds tax, 1975-1987.

       Big Horn County collected taxes on its own behalf and for other jurisdictions.

       The Tribe’s Chairman, in a March 11,1975, statement opposing an increase in Montana coal taxes, however, observed that the State “has an important governmental responsibility” for development of Indian coal resources, particularly on the ceded strip; the role of the State, the Chairman added, “is substantially reduced where development takes place on the Crow Reservation, for under... federal law the Crow Tribe ... exercises governmental and proprietary jurisdiction over the people and property within its reservation.” App. 53.

       On March 3,1978, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior disapproved, on procedural grounds, an amendment to the Crow Constitution that would have had the effect of applying the Tribe’s 1976 coal tax code to the removal of coal underlying the ceded area. Id., at 98; see also Defendant’s Exhs. 542, 543.

       Specifically, the amended complaints sought all moneys paid as severance taxes from 1975 through 1983, and as gross proceeds taxes from 1975 through 1988, together with prejudgment interest. App. to Pet. for Cert. 250-251, 259.

       An earlier amended complaint filed in November 1982, a year after Crow I, sought in addition to the declaratory and injunctive relief originally requested, “restitutionary, tax refunds, money damages, and other relief,” including “punitive or exemplary damages.” App. 143, 158. The current complaints seek restitution, but do not refer to “refunds” or “money damages.”
      In 1998, the Tribe sought once again to amend its complaint, inter alia, to recover from Westmoreland taxes allegedly due under the Tribe’s coal tax ordinance for the period 1976-1982. In a July 1993 order, the District Court denied leave to amend, observing: “This case is now more than fifteen years old”; “defendants have allowed... previous motions to amend the complaint to be granted without objection”; “[t]his motion, however, contains additional causes of action... [which] could change the nature of the litigation.” Record, Doc. No. 637, p. 4. In so ruling, the District Court noted that “[t]he trial court’s discretion [to deny tardy amendments] is... broadened” when newly alleged facts and theories “have been known to the party seeking amendment since the inception of the cause of action.” Id., at 3.

       The District Court clarified that its 1988 ruling referring to the Interior Department’s error was issued not to suggest any Westmoreland tax obligation to the Tribe in lieu of the State predating the 1982 lease agreement, but “as a basis for ordering that the escrowed funds be released to the Tribe and not Westmoreland by virtue of [that] agreement.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 36; see also id., at 53-54.

       The Tribe and the United States also claimed that the State and Big Horn County were unjustly enriched as a result of their tortious interference with the Tribe's contractual and business relationships with the Shell Oil Company. The District Court rejected this claim as not proved, see
        id., at 64-57, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed that disposition. 92 F. 3d 826, 830-831, amended, 98 F. 3d 1194 (1996). We denied the Tribe’s cross-petition for review of the final judgment disposing of the Shell Oil claim. 522 U. S. 819 (1997).

         The Court of Appeals repeatedly referred to “law of the ease” made in Crow III, see 92 F. 3d, at 828, and n. 2, 829, a decision denying interlocutory review and therefore containing no “holding,” see supra, at 708-709.

       But cf Crow I, 650 F. 2d, at 1110 (“incidence of [Montana’s] taxes is on the non-Indian mineral lessee”); id., at 1113, n. 13 (“[a]s to the taxes already paid by Westmoreland,. .. [the Tribe] is apparently not entitled to any refund”).

       But cf. App. to Pet. for Cert. 35 (District Court found that during the 1975 through 1982 period Westmoreland "would not have paid coal taxes to the Tribe as no Department of Interior approval had been obtained to allow a pass-through to its customers”).

       “A summary disposition affirms only the judgment of the court below, and no more may be read into our action than was essential to sustain that judgment.” Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, 785, n. 5 (1983).

       Since 1985, the District Court observed, “the Montana legislature has enacted production incentive credits and incrementally reduced the amount of the severance tax”; in November 1994, the rate was 15 percent of the contract sales price. App. to Pet. for Cert. 25.

       In view of the evidence diligently canvassed by the District Court, including the Tribe-Westmoreland 1982 agreement that Westmoreland would have no tax liability to the Tribe for the 1976-1982 period, see
        supra, at 705, 710-711, we see no substantial basis for believing that West-moreland “would have paid the tribal tax even without [the Interior Department’s] approval” or that “Westmoreland was willing to pay coal taxes to the Tribe as early as 1976,” six years before the Department agreed that the Tribe was positioned to tax coal mined at the ceded strip. Crow IV, 92 F. 3d, at 830.

       The Tribe attempted, unsuccessfully, to show that Montana's high taxes caused the Tribe to lose its lease with Shell Oil Company. See supra, at 711-712, n. 10.

      In December 1990, the United States, as trustee for the Tribe, filed its own amended complaint seeking essentially the same relief


author: Justice Breyer

text:
    OHIO FORESTRY ASSOCIATION, INC. v. SIERRA CLUB et al.
    No. 97-16.
    Argued February 25, 1998
    Decided May 18, 1998

      Beeyer, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

      Malcolm L. Stewart argued the cause for the federal respondents in support of petitioner, under this Court’s Rule 12.6. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Wax-man, Assistant Attorney General Schiffer, and Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler.

      Steven P. Quarles argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Clifton S. Elgarten, Thomas R. Lundquist, and William R. Murray.

      Frederick M. Gittes argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Patti A. Goldman, Todd D. True, and Alex Levinson.

      Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the Alabama Forestry Association et al. by Charles Rothfeld; for Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics et al. by Michael Axline; for the Pacific Legal Foundation by Robin L. Rivett; for the Southeastern Ohio Oil & Gas Association by James S. Huggins and M. Dale Leeper; and for the Washington Legal Foundation et al. by Daniel J. Popeo and Richard A. Samp.

        William V. Luneburg filed a brief for the Institute for Fisheries Resources et al. as amici curiae.

   Justice Breyer

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Sierra Club challenges the lawfulness of a federal land and resource management plan adopted by the United States Forest Service for Ohio’s Wayne National Forest on the ground that the plan permits too much logging and too much elearcutting. We conclude that the controversy is not yet ripe for judicial review.

I

The National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA) requires the Secretary of Agriculture to “develop, maintain, and, as appropriate, revise land and resource management plans for units of the National Forest System.” 90 Stat. 2949, as renumbered and amended, 16 U. S. C. § 1604(a). The System itself is vast. It includes 155 national forests, 20 national grasslands, 8 land utilization projects, and other lands that together occupy nearly 300,000 square miles of land located in 44 States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. § 1609(a); 36 CFR § 200.1(c)(2) (1997); Office of the Federal Register, United States Government Manual 135 (1997/1998). The National Forest Service, which manages the System, develops land and resource management plans pursuant to NFMA, and uses these forest plans to “guide all natural resource management activities,” 36 CFR § 219.1(b) (1997), including use of the land for “outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, wildlife and fish, and wilderness.” 16 U. S. C. § 1604(e)(1). In developing the plans, the Service must take both environmental and commercial goals into account. See, e. g., § 1604(g); 36 CFR § 219.1(a) (1997).

This ease focuses upon a plan that the Forest Service has developed for the Wayne National Forest located in southern Ohio. When the Service wrote the plan, the forest consisted of 178,000 federally owned acres (278 sq. mi.) in three forest units that are interspersed among privately owned lands, some of which the Forest Service plans to acquire over time. See Land and Resource Management Plan, Wayne National Forest, United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Eastern Region (1987) 1-3,3-1, A-13 to A-17 (hereinafter Plan). The Plan permits logging to take place on 126,000 (197 sq. mi.) of the federally owned acres. Id., at 4-7, 4-180. At the same time, it sets a ceiling on the total amount of wood that can be cut — a ceiling that amounts to about 75 million board feet over 10 years, and which, the Plan projects, would lead to logging on about 8,000 acres (12.5 sq. mi.) during that decade. Id., at 4-180. According to the Plan, logging on about 5,000 (7.8 sq. mi.) of those 8,000 acres would involve clearcutting, or other forms of what the Forest Service calls “even-aged” tree harvesting. Id., at 3-5, 4-180.

Although the Plan sets logging goals, selects the areas of the forest that are suited to timber production, 16 U. S. C. § 1604(k), and determines which “probable methods of timber harvest” are appropriate, § 1604(f)(2), it does not itself authorize the cutting of any trees. Before the Forest Service can permit the logging, it must: (a) propose a specific area in which logging will take place and the harvesting methods to be used, Plan 4-20 to 4-25; 53 Fed. Reg. 26835-26836 (1988); (b) ensure that the project is consistent with the Plan, 16 U. S. C. § 1604(i); 36 CFR § 219.10(e) (1997); (c) provide those affected by proposed logging notice and an opportunity to be heard, 106 Stat. 1419 (note following 16 U. S. C. § 1612); 36 CFR pt. 215, § 217.1(b) (1997); Plan 5-2; (d) conduct an environmental analysis pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), 42 U. S. C. §4332 et seq.; Plan 4-14, to evaluate the effects of the specific project and to contemplate alternatives, 40 CFR §§1502.14, 1508.9(b) (1997); Plan 1-2; and (e) subsequently make a final decision to permit logging, which affected persons may challenge in an administrative appeals process and in court, see 106 Stat. 1419-1420 (note folowing 16 U. S. C. § 1612); 5 U. S. C. §701 et seq. See also 53 Fed. Reg. 26834-26835 (1988); 58 Fed. Reg. 19370-19371 (1998). Furthermore, the statute requires the Forest Service to “revise” the Plan “as appropriate.” 16 U. S. C. § 1604(a). Despite the considerable legal distance between the adoption of the Plan and the moment when a tree is cut, the Plan’s promulgation nonetheless makes logging more likely in that it is a logging precondition; in its absence logging could not take place. See ibid, (requiring promulgation of forest plans); § 1604(i) (requiring all later forest uses to conform to forest plans).

When the Forest Service first proposed its Plan, the Sierra Club and the Citizens Council on Conservation and Environmental Control each objected. In an effort to bring about the Plan’s modification, they (collectively Sierra Club), pursued various administrative remedies. See Administrative Decision of the Chief of the Forest Service (Nov. 14, 1990), Pet. for Cert. 66a; Appeal Decision, Wayne National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan (Jan. 14, 1992), id., at 78a. The Sierra Club then brought this lawsuit in federal court, initially against the Chief of the Forest Service, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Regional Forester, and the Forest Supervisor. The Ohio Forestry Association, some of whose members harvest timber from the Wayne National Forest or process wood products obtained from the forest, later intervened as a defendant.

The Sierra Club’s second amended complaint sets forth its legal claims. That complaint initially states facts that describe the Plan in detail and allege that erroneous analysis leads the Plan wrongly to favor logging and eleareutting. Second Amended Complaint ¶¶ 13-47 (hereinafter Complaint), App. 16-23. The Complaint then sets forth three claims for relief.

The first claim for relief says that the “defendants in approving the plan for the Wayne [National Forest] and in directing or permitting below-cost timber sales accomplished by means of eleareutting” violated various laws including the NFMA, the NEPA, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Complaint ¶ 49, id., at 24.

The second claim says that the “defendants’ actions in directing or permitting below-cost timber sales in the Wayne [National Forest] under the plan violate [their] duties as public trustees.” Complaint ¶ 52, ibid.

The third claim says that, in selecting the amount of the forest suitable for timber production, the defendants followed regulations that failed properly to identify “economically unsuitable lands.” Complaint ¶¶ 54-58, id., at 25-26. It adds that, because the Forest Service’s regulations thereby permitted the Service'to place “economically unsuitable lands” in the category of land where logging could take place, the regulations violated them authorizing statute, NFMA, 16 U. S. C. § 1600 et seq., and were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law,” pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. § 701 et seq. Complaint ¶ 60, App. 26.

The Complaint finally requests as relief: (a) a declaration that the Plan “is unlawful as are the below-cost timber sales and timbering, including eleareutting, authorized by the plan,” (b) an “injunction prohibiting the defendants from permitting or directing further timber harvest and/or below-cost timber sales” pending Plan revision, (e) costs and attorney’s fees, and (d) “such other further relief as may be appropriate.” Complaint ¶¶ (aMd), id., at 26-27.

The District Court reviewed the Plan, decided that the Forest Service had acted lawfully in making the various determinations that the Sierra Club had challenged, and granted summary judgment for the Forest Service. Sierra Club v. Robertson, 845 F. Supp. 485, 508 (SD Ohio 1994). The Sierra Club appealed. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the dispute was justiciable, finding both that the Sierra Club had standing to bring suit, and that since the suit was “ripe for review,” there was no need to wait “until a site-specific action occurs.” Sierra Club v. Thomas, 105 F. 3d 248, 250 (1997). The Court of Appeals disagreed with the District Court about the merits. It held that the Plan improperly favored clearcutting and therefore violated NFMA. Id., at 251-252. We granted certiorari to determine whether the dispute about the Plan presents a controversy that is justiciable now, and if so, whether the Plan conforms to the statutory and regulatory requirements for a forest plan.

II

Petitioner alleges that this suit is nonjusticiable both because the Sierra Club lacks standing to bring this case and because the issues before us — over the Plan’s specifications for logging and clearcutting — are not yet ripe for adjudication. We find that the dispute is not justiciable, because it is not ripe for court review. Cf. Steel Co. v. Citizens For Better Environment, ante, at 100-101, n. 3.

As this Court has previously pointed out, the ripeness requirement is designed

“to prevent the courts, through avoidance of premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements over administrative policies, and also to protect the agencies from judicial interference until an administrative decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties.” Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 148-149 (1967).

In deciding whether an agency’s decision is, or is not, ripe for judicial review, the Court has examined both the “fitness of the issues for judicial decision” and the “hardship to the parties of withholding court consideration.” Id., at 149. To do so in this ease, we must consider: (1) whether delayed review would cause hardship to the plaintiffs; (2) whether judicial intervention would inappropriately interfere with further administrative action; and (8) whether the courts would benefit from further factual development of the issues presented. These considerations, taken together, foreclose review in the present ease.

First, to “withhold] court consideration” at present will not cause the parties significant “hardship” as this Court has come to use that term. Ibid. For one thing, the provisions of the Plan that the Sierra Club challenges do not create adverse effects of a strictly legal kind, that is, effects of a sort that traditionally would have qualified as harm. To paraphrase this Court’s language in United States v. Los Angeles & Salt Lake R. Co., 273 U. S. 299, 309-310 (1927) (opinion of Brandéis, J.), they do not command anyone to do anything or to refrain from doing anything; they do not grant, withhold, or modify any formal legal license, power, or authority; they do not subject anyone to any civil or criminal liability; they create no legal rights or obligations. Thus, for example, the Plan does not give anyone a legal right to cut trees, nor does it abolish anyone’s legal authority to object to trees being cut.

Nor have we found that the Plan now inflicts significant practical harm upon the interests that the Sierra Club advances — an important consideration in light of this Court’s modern ripeness cases. See, e. g., Abbott Laboratories, supra, at 152-154. As we have pointed out, before the Forest Service can permit logging, it must focus upon a particular site, propose a specific harvesting method, prepare an environmental review, permit the public an opportunity to be heard, and (if challenged) justify the proposal in court. Supra, at 729-730. The Sierra Club thus will have ample opportunity later to bring its legal challenge at a time when harm is more imminent and more certain. Any such later challenge might also include a challenge to the lawfulness of the present Plan if (but only if) the present Plan then matters, i. e., if the Plan plays a causal role with respect to the future, then-imminent, harm from logging. Hence we do not find a strong reason why the Sierra Club must bring its challenge now in order to get relief. Cf. Abbott Laboratories, supra, at 152.

Nor has the Sierra Club pointed to any other way in which the Plan could now force it to modify its behavior in order to avoid future adverse consequences, as, for example, agency regulations can sometimes force immediate compliance through fear of future sanctions. Cf. Abbott Laboratories, supra, at 152-153 (finding challenge ripe where plaintiffs must comply with Federal Drug Administration labeling rule at once and incur substantial economic costs or risk later serious criminal and civil penalties for unlawful drug distribution); Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. United States, 316 U. S. 407, 417-419 (1942) (finding challenge ripe where plaintiffs must comply with burdensome Federal Communications Commission rule at once or risk later loss of license and consequent serious harm).

The Sierra Club does say that it will be easier, and certainly cheaper, to mount one legal challenge against the Plan now, than to pursue many challenges to each site-specific logging decision to which the Plan might eventually lead. It does not explain, however, why one initial site-specific victory (if based on the Plan’s unlawfulness) could not, through preclusion principles, effectively carry the day. See Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U. S. 871, 894 (1990). And, in any event, the Court has not considered this kind of litigation cost saving sufficient by itself to justify review in a case that would otherwise be unripe. The ripeness doctrine reflects a judgment that the disadvantages of a premature review that may prove too abstract or unnecessary ordinarily outweigh the additional costs of — even repetitive— postimplementation litigation. See, e. g., ibid. (“The case-by-ease approach ... is understandably frustrating to an organization such as respondent, which has as its objective across-the-board protection of our Nation’s ... foreste .... But this is the traditional, and remains the normal, mode of operation of the courts”); FTC v. Standard Oil Co. of Cal., 449 U. S. 232, 244 (1980); Renegotiation Bd. v. Bannercraft Clothing Co., 415 U. S. 1, 24 (1974); Petroleum Exploration, Inc. v. Public Serv. Comm’n, 304 U. S. 209, 222 (1938).

Second, from the agency’s perspective, immediate judicial review directed at the lawfulness of logging and clearcutting could hinder agency efforts to refine its policies: (a) through revision of the Plan, e. g., in response to an appropriate pro-, posed site-specific action that is inconsistent with the Plan, see 53 Fed. Reg. 23807, 26836 (1988), or (b) through application of the Plan in practice, e. g., in the form of site-specific proposals, which are subject to review by a court applying purely legal criteria. Cf Abbott Laboratories, supra, at 149; Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Comm'n, 461 U. S. 190, 201 (1983). Cf. Standard Oil Co., supra, at 242 (premature review “denies the agency an opportunity to correct its own mistakes and to apply its expertise”). And, here, the possibility that further consideration will actually occur before the Plan is implemented is not theoretical, but real. See, e. g., 60 Fed. Reg. 18886, 18901 (1995) (forest plans often not fully implemented), id., at 18905-18907 (discussing process for amending forest plans); 58 Fed. Reg. 19369, 19370-19371 (1993) (citing administrative appeals indicating that plans are merely programmatic in nature and that plan cannot foresee all effects on forest); Appeal Nos. 92-09-11-0008, 92-09-11-0009 (Lodging II) (successful Sierra Club administrative appeals against Wayne timber harvesting site-specific projects). Hearing the Sierra Club’s challenge now could thus interfere with the system that Congress specified for the agency to reach forest logging decisions.

Third, from the courts’ perspective, review of the Sierra Club’s claims regarding logging and clearcutting now would require time-consuming judicial consideration of the details of an elaborate, technically based plan, which predicts consequences that may affect many different parcels of land in a variety of ways, and which effects themselves may change over time. That review would have to take place without benefit of the focus that a particular logging proposal could provide. Thus, for example, the court below in evaluating the Sierra Club’s claims had to focus upon whether the Plan as a whole was “improperly skewed,” rather than focus upon whether the decision to allow clearcutting on a particular site was improper, say, because the site was better suited to another use or logging there would cumulatively result in too many trees being cut. See 105 F. 3d, at 250-251. And, of course, depending upon the agency’s future actions to revise the Plan or modify the expected methods of implementation, review now may turn out to have been unnecessary. See Standard Oil Co., supra, at 242.

This type of review threatens the kind of “abstract disagreements over administrative policies,” Abbott Laboratories, 387 U. S., at 148, that the ripeness doctrine seeks to avoid. In this case, for example, the Court of Appeals panel disagreed about whether or not the Forest Service suffered from a kind of general “bias” in favor of timber production and clearcutting. Review where the consequences had been “reduced to more manageable proportions,” and where the "factual components [were] fleshed out, by some concrete action” might have led the panel majority either to demonstrate that bias- and its consequences through record citation (which it did not do) or to abandon the claim. National Wildlife Federation, supra, at 891. All this is to say that farther factual development would "significantly advance our ability to deal with the legal issues presented” and would “aid us in their resolution.” Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U. S. 59, 82 (1978).

Finally, Congress has not provided for preimplementation judicial review of forest plans. Those plans are tools for agency planning and management. The Plan is consequently unlike agency rules that Congress has specifically instructed the courts to review "pre-enforcement.” Cf. National Wildlife Federation, supra, at 891; 15 U. S. C. § 2618 (Toxic Substances Control Act) (providing preenforeement review of agency action); 30 U. S. C. § 1276(a) (Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977) (same); 42 U. S. C. §6976 (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976) (same); § 7607(b) (Clean Air Act) (same); 43 U. S. C. § 1349(c)(3) (Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act); Harrison v. PPG Industries, Inc., 446 U. S. 578, 592-593 (1980). Nor does the Plan, which through standards guides future use of forests, resemble an environmental impact statement prepared pursuant to NEPA. That is because in this respect NEPA, unlike the NFMA, simply guarantees a particular procedure, not a particular result. Compare 16 U. S. C. § 1604(e) (requiring that forest plans provide for multiple coordinated use of forests, including timber and wilderness) with 42 U. S. C. § 4332 (requiring that agencies prepare environmental impact statements where major agency action would significantly affect the environment). Hence a person with standing who is injured by a failure to comply with the NEPA procedure may complain of that failure at the time the failure takes place, for the claim can never get riper.

I — 1 Í — I

The Sierra Club makes one further important contrary argument. It says that the Plan will hurt it in many ways that we have not yet mentioned. Specifically, the Sierra Club says that the Plan will permit “many intrusive activities, such as opening trails to motorcycles or using heavy machinery/’ which “will go forward without any additional consideration of their impact on wilderness recreation.” Brief for Respondents 34. At the same time, in areas designated for logging, “affirmative measures to promote undisturbed backcountry recreation, such as closing roads and building additional hiking trails,” will not take place. Ibid. These are harms, says the Sierra Club, that will not take place at a distant future time. Rather, they will take place now.

This argument suffers from the legally fatal problem that it makes its first appearance here in this Court in the briefs on the merits. The Complaint, fairly read, does not include such claims. Instead, it focuses on the amount and method of timber harvesting. The Sierra Club has not referred us to any other court documents in which it protests the Plan’s approval of motorcycles or machinery, the Plan’s failure to close roads or to provide for the building of trails, or other disruptions that the Plan might cause those who use the forest for hiking. As far as we can tell, prior to the argument on the merits here, the harm to which the Sierra Club objected consisted of too much, and the wrong kind of, logging.

The matter is significant because the Government concedes that if the Sierra Club had previously raised these other kinds of harm, the ripeness analysis in this ease with respect to those provisions of the Plan that produce the harm would be significantly different. The Government’s brief in the Court of Appeals said:

“If, for example, a plan incorporated a final decision to close a specific area to off-road vehicles, the plan itself could result in imminent concrete injury to a party with an interest in the use of off-road vehicles in that area.” Brief for Federal Appellees in No. 94-3407 (CA6), p. 20.

And, at oral argument, the Solicitor General agreed that if the Sierra Club’s claim was that the “plan was allowing motorcycles into a bird-watching area or something [like that], that would be immediately justiciable.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 5. Thus, we believe these other claims that the Sierra Club now raises are not fairly presented here, and we cannot consider them.

IV

For these reasons, we find the respondents’ suit not ripe for review. We vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and we remand this case with instructions to dismiss.

It is so ordered.


author: CHIEF Justice Rehnquist Justice Breyer,

text:
    CALDERON, WARDEN, et al. v. ASHMUS, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated
    No. 97-391.
    Argued March 24, 1998
    Decided May 26, 1998

      Rehnquisx, C. J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Breyeb, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Souter, J., joined, post, p. 749.

      Ronald S. Matthias, Supervising Deputy Attorney General of California, argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General, pro se, George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, and Ronald A. Bass and Dane R. Gillette, Senior Assistant Attorneys General.

      Michael Laurence argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Gary D. Sowards and Jean R. Sternberg.

      A brief of amici curiae urging reversal was filed for the State of Maryland et al. by J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General of Maryland, and Andrew H. Baida and David P. Kennedy, Assistant Attorneys General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Bill Pryor of Alabama, Grant Woods of Arizona, Gale A Norton of Colorado, John M. Bailey of Connecticut, M. Jane Brady of Delaware, Robert A Butterworth of Florida, Thurbert E. Baker of Georgia, Margery S. Bron-

        ster of Hawaii, Alan G. Lance of Idaho, James E. Ryan of Illinois, Jeffrey A. Modisett of Indiana, Carla J. Stovall of Kansas, Richard R leyoub of Louisiana, Michael C. Moore of Mississippi, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Joseph P. Mamrek of Montana, Don Stenberg of Nebraska, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, Philip T. McLaughlin of New Hampshire, Dennis C. Vacco of New York, Michael F. Easley of North Carolina, Betty D. Montgomery of Ohio, W. A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, D. Michael Fisher of Pennsylvania, Charles M. Condon of South Carolina, Mark Barnett of South Dakota, John Knox Walkup of Tennessee, Dan Morales of Texas, Jan Graham of Utah, Richard Cullen of Virginia, and Tom Udall of New Mexico.

   CHIEF Justice Rehnquist

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Chapter 154 of 28 U. S. C., part of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U. S. C. §2261 et seq. (1994 ed., Supp. II), provides certain procedural advantages to qualifying States in federal habeas proceedings. This ease requires us to decide whether state death-row inmates may sue state officials for declaratory and in-junctive relief limited to determining whether California qualifies under Chapter 154.

Chapter 154 revises procedural rules for federal habeas proceedings in capital cases. Most notably, it provides for an expedited review process in proceedings brought against qualifying States. It imposes a 180-day limitation period for filing a federal habeas petition. § 2263(a). It treats an untimely petition as a successive petition for purposes of obtaining a stay of execution, § 2262(e), and it allows a prisoner to amend a petition after an answer is filed only where the prisoner meets the requirements for a successive petition, § 2266(b)(3)(B). Chapter 154 also obligates a federal district court to render a final judgment on any petition within 180 days of its filing, and a court of appeals to render a final determination within 120 days of the briefing. §§ 2266(a) and (c).

As a general rule, Chapter 153 — which has a 1-year filing period, § 2244(d)(1), and lacks expedited review procedures— governs federal habeas proceedings against a State. Chapter 154 will apply in capital cases only if the State meets certain conditions. A State must establish “a mechanism for the appointment, compensation, and payment of reasonable litigation expenses of competent counsel” in state postconviction proceedings, and “must provide standards of competency for the appointment of such counsel.” § 2261(b) (States with separate postconvietion review proceedings); § 2265(a) (States with unitary review procedures). The State must offer counsel to all capital defendants, and the state court must enter an order concerning appointment of counsel. §§ 2261(b), 2265(b). If a State meets these criteria, then it may invoke Chapter 154.

Various California officials, including petitioner Attorney General Lungren, publicly indicated that they thought California qualified under Chapter 154 and that they intended to invoke the chapter’s protections. Respondent Troy Ash-mus, a state prisoner sentenced to death, filed a class-action suit against petitioners. The class, which included all capital prisoners in California whose convictions were affirmed on direct appeal after June 6, 1989, sought declaratory and injunctive relief to resolve uncertainty over whether Chapter 154 applied.

The District Court issued a declaratory judgment holding that California does not presently qualify for Chapter 154 and that Chapter 154 therefore does not apply to any class members. It also issued a preliminary injunction enjoining petitioners from “trying or seeking to obtain for the State of California the benefits of the provisions of Chapter 154 ... in any state or federal proceedings involving any class member.” 935 F. Supp. 1048, 1076 (ND Cal. 1996).

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. 123 F. 3d 1199 (1997). As a threshold matter, the Court of Appeals rejected petitioners’ claim that the Eleventh Amendment barred respondent’s suit as one against the State. The court concluded that the case falls within the Ex parte Young exception to Eleventh Amendment immunity, Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908), because respondent sufficiently alleged a continuing violation of federal law. 123 F. 3d, at 1204-1206. California’s announced intention to invoke Chapter 154, without having complied with its requirements, threatened to violate the class members’ right to thorough federal review of their first habeas petitions, pursuant to Chapter 153, and their right to assistance of counsel in federal habeas proceedings, pursuant to 21 U. S. C. § 848(q). By stating its intention to invoke Chapter 154, the Court of Appeals reasoned, California forced inmates to make an unacceptable choice: filing a pro se petition within 180 days in order to ensure compliance with Chapter 154, which may fail to raise substantial claims, or waiting until counsel is appointed, which may miss the 180-day filing deadline if Chapter 154 applies. 123 F. 3d, at 1204-1205.

The Court of Appeals also determined that the District Court had authority to issue a declaratory judgment under 28 U. S. C. § 2201(a). 123 F. 3d, at 1206-1207. It noted that a declaratory judgment plaintiff need only demonstrate an independent basis of federal jurisdiction and an actual ease or controversy. Id., at 1206. The District Court had federal question jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1331 because the ease challenged the interpretation of a federal Act. And the ease-or-controversy requirement was satisfied, the court concluded, because “the State’s threats to invoke Chapter 154 will significantly affect the plaintiff-class’s ability to obtain habeas corpus review by a federal court.” 123 F. 3d, at 1207.

The Court of Appeals agreed in large part with the District Court's conclusion that California does not qualify, and therefore found Chapter 154 inapplicable. In affirming the grant of injunctive relief, the Court of Appeals rejected petitioners’ contention that enjoining their advocacy of a particular legal position violates the First Amendment. It thought the injunction did not interfere with the state officials’ rights since they were free to voice their opinion that the decision was wrong — only not in court in order to invoke the benefits of Chapter 154. Id., at 1207-1209.

Petitioners sought review in this Court. We granted certiorari on both the Eleventh Amendment and the First Amendment issues, 522 U. S. 1011 (1997), but in keeping with our precedents, have decided that we must first address whether this action for a declaratory judgment is the sort of “Article III” “case or controversy” to which federal courts are limited. See, e. g., FW/PBS, Inc. v. Dallas, 493 U. S. 215, 230-231 (1990).

Before the enactment of the federal Declaratory Judgment Act, this Court expressed the view that a “declaratory judgment” was not within that jurisdiction. Willing v. Chicago Auditorium Assn., 277 U. S. 274, 289 (1928). But in Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U. S. 249 (1933), the Court held that it did have jurisdiction to review a declaratory judgment granted by a state court. And in Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U. S. 227 (1937), we decided that the federal Declaratory Judgment Act validly conferred jurisdiction on federal courts to issue declaratory judgments in appropriate cases.

That Act provides that “[i]n a ease of actual controversy within its jurisdiction,... any court of the United States ... may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought.” 28 U. S. C. § 2201. See also Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 57. Thus, in Aetna Life Ins., we held that an insurance company could bring a declaratory judgment action to determine the validity of insurance polieies. The company and the insured disputed whether the polieies had lapsed and how much was currently payable, but the insured had not brought suit to recover benefits. 300 U. S., at 239-240. We observed that the controversy would admit “of specific relief through a decree of a conclusive character, as distinguished from an opinion advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.” Id., at 241. See also Wallace, supra, at 262. We have thus recognized the potential for declaratory judgment suits to fall outside the constitutional definition of a “case” in Article III: a claim “ ‘brought before the court(s) for determination by such regular proceedings as are established by law or custom for the protection or enforcement of rights, or the prevention, redress, or punishment of wrongs.’ ” Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126, 129 (1922).

The underlying “controversy” between petitioners and respondent is whether respondent is entitled to federal habeas relief setting aside his sentence or conviction obtained in the California courts. But no such final or conclusive determination was sought in this action. Instead, respondent carved out of that claim only the question whether, when he sought habeas relief, California would be governed by Chapter 153 or by Chapter 154 in defending the action. Had he brought a habeas action itself, he undoubtedly would have obtained such a determination, but he seeks to have that question determined in anticipation of seeking habeas so that he will be better able to know, for example, the time limits that govern the habeas action.

We think previous decisions of this Court bar the use of the Declaratory Judgment Act for this purpose. In Coffman v. Breeze Corps., 323 U. S. 316 (1945), a patent owner brought suit seeking to have the Royalty Adjustment Act declared unconstitutional and to enjoin his licensee from paying accrued royalties to the government. The Court held that the action presented no case or controversy. The validity of the Act would properly arise only in a suit by the patent holder to recover the royalties, which could afford complete and adequate relief. In such a suit, if the licensee were to assert compliance with the Act as a defense to an obligation to pay the amounts due, the patent holder’s right of recovery would then depend on a determination of the Act’s validity. Id., at 322-323. The Court thus concluded that there was no justiciable question “unless and until [the patent owner] seeks recovery of the royalties, and then only if [the licensee] relies on the Act as a defense.” Id., at 324. See also Public Serv. Comm’n of Utah v. Wycoff Co., 344 U. S. 237, 245-246 (1952).

As in Coffman, respondent here seeks a declaratory judgment as to the validity of a defense the State may, or may not, raise in a habeas proceeding. Such a suit does not merely allow the resolution of a “case or controversy” in an alternative format, as in Aetna Life Ins., supra, but rather attempts to gain a litigation advantage by obtaining an advance ruling on an affirmative defense, see Coffman, supra, at 322-324; Wycoff Co., supra, at 245-246. The “case or controversy” actually at stake is the class members’ claims in their individual habeas proceedings. Any judgment in this action thus would not resolve the entire ease or controversy as to any one of them, but would merely determine a collateral legal issue governing certain aspects of their pending or future suits.

The disruptive effects of an action such as this are peculiarly great when the underlying claim must be adjudicated in a federal habeas proceeding. For we have held that any claim by a prisoner attacking the validity or duration of his confinement must be brought under the habeas sections of Title 28 of the United States Code. Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475, 500 (1973). As that opinion pointed out, this means that a state prisoner is required to exhaust state remedies before bringing his claim to a federal court. Id., at 489-491. But if respondent Ashmus is allowed to maintain the present action, he would obtain a declaration as to the applicable statute of limitations in a federal habeas action without ever having shown that he has exhausted state remedies. This aberration illustrates the need, emphasized in Coffman and Wycoff, to prevent federal-court litigants from seeking by declaratory judgment to litigate a single issue in a dispute that must await another lawsuit for complete resolution.

If the class members file habeas petitions, and the State asserts Chapter 154, the members obviously can litigate California’s compliance with Chapter 154 at that time. Any risk associated with resolving the question in habeas, rather than a pre-emptive suit, is no different from risks associated with choices commonly faced by litigants.

When asked at oral argument what authority existed for allowing a declaratory judgment suit on an anticipated defense, respondent replied that Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452 (1974), allows a declaratory judgment action to prevent interference with federal rights. See also Brief for Respondent 16. Although acknowledging that Steffel involved a continuing threat of arrest in violation of the First Amendment, respondent argued that the Court’s decision did not distinguish types of threats. Here, according to respondent, the State’s “threat” to assert Chapter 154 in habeas proceedings and the risk that the class members will thereby lose their rights to application of Chapter 158 are sufficient to establish federal court jurisdiction.

Steffel, however, falls within the traditional scope of declaratory judgment actions because it completely resolved a concrete controversy susceptible to conclusive judicial determination. In Steffel, protesters had twice been told they would be arrested for handbilling in front of a shopping center, and the plaintiff’s companion had in fact been arrested after disregarding instructions to leave. Id., at 455-456. The imminent threat of state criminal prosecution and the consequent deterrence of the plaintiff’s exercise of constitutionally protected rights established a case or controversy. Id., at 459. That controversy could have been completely resolved by the declaratory judgment sought by the plaintiff. Id., at 460-462.

The differences between this case and Steffel are several. Here, California’s assertions on Chapter 154 have no coercive impact on the legal rights or obligations of either party. It is the members of the class, and not the State, who anticipate filing lawsuits. Those habeas actions would challenge the validity of their state court convictions and sentences; the State will oppose such challenges. The present declaratory judgment action would not completely resolve those challenges, but would simply carve out one issue in the dispute for separate adjudication.

We conclude that this action for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief is not a justiciable ease within the meaning of Article III. The judgment of the Court of Appeals accordingly is reversed, and the case is remanded with instructions that respondent’s complaint be dismissed.

It is so ordered.

Justice Breyer,

with whom Justice Souter joins, concurring.

The Court says that “[respondent class members] can litigate California’s compliance with Chapter 154” when they "file habeas petitions.” Ante, at 748. In light of the Court of Appeals’ concern, echoed by respondent class members, that without declaratory relief, they would be placed in an untenable remedial “dilemma,” Brief for Respondent 16-17, 35-37; 123 P. 3d 1199, 1205 (CA9 1997), I would add that it should prove possible for at least some habeas petitioners to obtain a relatively expeditious judicial answer to the Chapter 154 compliance question and thereby provide legal guidance for others. That is because, in at least some cases, whether a petitioner can or cannot amend, say, a “bare bones” habeas petition (filed within 180 days) will likely depend upon whether California does, or does not, qualify as an “opt-in” State. Compare 28 U. S. C. §2242 (ordinary amendment rules); § 2254 Rule 11 (rules of civil procedure applicable to federal habeas petitions); 1 J. Liebman & R. Hertz, Federal Habeas Corpus Practice and Procedure §17.2 (2d ed. 1994 and Supp. 1997) (Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15’s liberal standard for amendment applies to habeas petitions in States not eligible for Chapter 154); with 28 U. S. C. § 2266(b)(3)(B) (1994 ed., Supp. II) (setting forth strict standard for amendment applicable where State falls within Chapter 154). And a district court’s determination that turned on the legal answer to that question might well qualify for interlocutory appeal. See 28 U. S. C. § 1292(b) (permitting certification, and hence interlocutory appeal, of certain district court determinations). With this understanding, I join the Court’s opinion.

       It is undisputed here that California is a unitary review State, which is a State that allows prisoners to raise collateral challenges in the course of direct review of the judgment, such that all damns may be raised in a single state appeal. See 28 U. S. C. § 2265(a) (1994 ed., Supp. II).

       While the Eleventh Amendment is jurisdictional in the sense that it is a limitation on the federal court's judicial power, and therefore can be raised at any stage''of the proceedings, we have recognized that it is not coextensive with the limitations on judicial power in Article III. See Idaho v. Coeur d’Alene Tribe of Idaho, 521 U. S. 261, 267 (1997); Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 515, n. 19 (1982).

       Respondent conceded this point in earlier briefings. Brief in Opposition 7. Respondent now contends, however, that habeas proceedings will not provide an effective remedy because the class members still will be put in the file-or-default dilemma and because a decision in one ease will not relieve the other members of their continuing uncertainty. Brief for Respondent 35-36. But as explained, supra, at 747, the dilemma the class members face does not establish a ease in the constitutional sense. And the inability to bind the government as to the whole class does not affect that determination.