Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court:
? Mitchell I and Mitchell II are the pathmarking precedents on the question whether a statute or regulation (or combination thereof) “can fairly be interpreted as mandating compensation by the Federal Government.”
In Mitchell I, we considered whether the Indian General Allotment Act of 1887 (GAA) authorized an award of money damages against the United States for alleged mismanagement of forests located on lands allotted to tribal members. The GAA authorized the President of the United States to allot agricultural or grazing land to individual tribal members residing on a reservation, and provided that “the United States does and will hold the land thus allotted ? in trust for the sole use and benefit of the Indian to whom such allotment shall have been made.”
We held that the GAA did not create private rights enforceable in a suit for money damages under the Indian Tucker Act. After examining the GAA’s language, history, and purpose, we concluded that it “created only a limited trust relationship between the United States and the allottee that does not impose any duty upon the Government to manage timber resources.”
? In Mitchell II, we held that a network of other statutes and regulations did impose judicially enforceable fiduciary duties upon the United States in its management of forested allotted lands. “In contrast to the bare trust created by the [GAA],” we observed, “the statutes and regulations now before us clearly give the Federal Government full responsibility to manage Indian resources and land for the benefit of the Indians.”
? Having determined that the statutes and regulations “establish[ed] fiduciary obligations of the Government in the management and operation of Indian lands and resources,” we concluded that the relevant legislative and executive prescriptions could “fairly be interpreted as mandating compensation by the Federal Government for damages sustained.”
We now consider whether the Indian Mineral Leasing Act of 1938 and its implementing regulations can fairly be interpreted as mandating compensation for the Government’s alleged breach of trust in this case. We conclude that they cannot?
The IMLA and its implementing regulations impose no obligations resembling the detailed fiduciary responsibilities that Mitchell II found adequate to support a claim for money damages. The IMLA simply requires Secretarial approval before coal mining leases negotiated between Tribes and third parties become effective and authorizes the Secretary generally to promulgate regulations governing mining operations.
Moreover, as in Mitchell I, imposing fiduciary duties on the Government here would be out of line with one of the statute’s principal purposes. The GAA was designed so that “the allottee, and not the United States, ? [would] manage the land.” Imposing upon the Government a fiduciary duty to oversee the management of allotted lands would not have served that purpose. So too here. The IMLA aims to enhance tribal self-determination by giving Tribes, not the Government, the lead role in negotiating mining leases with third parties. As the Court of Federal Claims recognized, “[t]he ideal of Indian self-determination is directly at odds with Secretarial control over leasing.”
? The Tribe’s second argument concentrates on the “skew[ing]” effect of Secretary Hodel’s 1985 intervention, i.e., his direction to Deputy Assistant Secretary Fritz to withhold action on Peabody’s appeal from the Area Director’s decision setting a royalty rate of 20 percent. The Secretary’s actions, both in intervening in the administrative appeal process, and in approving the amended Lease, the Tribe urges, were not based upon an assessment of the merits of the royalty issue; instead, the Tribe maintains, they were attributable entirely to the undue influence Peabody exerted through ex parte communications with the Secretary. Underscoring that the Tribe had no knowledge of those communications or of Secretary Hodel’s direction to Fritz, the Tribe asserts that its bargaining position was seriously compromised when it resumed negotiations with Peabody in 1985. The Secretary’s ultimate approval of the 12 1/2 percent royalty, the Tribe concludes, was thus an outcome fundamentally unfair to the Tribe.
Here again, as the Court of Federal Claims ultimately determined, the Tribe’s assertions are not grounded in a specific statutory or regulatory provision that can fairly be interpreted as mandating money damages.
? However one might appraise the Secretary’s intervention in this case, we have no warrant from any relevant statute or regulation to conclude that his conduct implicated a duty enforceable in an action for damages under the Indian Tucker Act. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is accordingly reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens and Justice O’Connor join, dissenting
? I part from the majority because I take the Secretary’s obligation to approve mineral leases as raising a substantial fiduciary obligation to the Navajo Nation (Tribe), which has pleaded and shown enough to survive the Government’s motion for summary judgment. I would affirm the judgment of the Federal Circuit.
? The legislative history and purposes of IMLA, however, illuminated by the Secretary’s historical role in reviewing conveyances of Indian lands, point to a fiduciary responsibility to make a more ambitious assessment of the best interest of the Tribe before signing off.
?I do not mean to suggest that devising a specific standard of responsibility is any simple matter, for we cannot ignore the tension between IMLA’s two objectives. If we thought solely in terms of the aim to ensure that negotiated leases “maximize tribal revenues,” we would ignore the object of IMLA to provide greater tribal responsibility, against which the Secretary’s oversight is acting as a hedge. The more stringent the substantive obligation of the Secretary, the less the scope of tribal responsibility. The Court, however, errs in the opposite direction, giving overriding weight to the interest of tribal autonomy to the point of concluding that the Secretary’s approval obligation cannot be an onerous one, thus losing sight of the mixture of congressional objectives. The standard of responsibility simply cannot give the whole hog to the one congressional policy or the other.
? The record discloses serious indications that the 12 1/2 percent royalty rate in the lease amendments was substantially less than fair market value for the Tribe’s high quality coal. In the course of deciding that 20 percent would be a reasonable adjustment under the terms of the lease, the Area Director of the Board of Indian Affairs (BIA) considered several independent economic studies, each one of them recommending rates around 20 percent, and one specifically rejecting 12 1/2 percent as “inadequate.”
? Of course I recognize that the Secretary’s obligation is to approve leases, not royalty rates in isolation, but an allegation that he approved an otherwise unjustified rate apparently well below market for the particular resource deposit certainly raises a claim of breach.
? All of this is not to say that the Tribe would end up with a recovery at the end of the day. Disputed facts have not been tried; the negotiations affected not only the 1964 lease that was subject to adjustment on demand, but also other leases apparently not subject to the same option for the Tribe’s benefit; and the renegotiated terms affected lease provisions other than royalties (including tax terms). For all we can say now, the net of all these changes may have been an overall bargain in the Tribe’s interest, despite the smaller royalty figure in the lease as approved. But the only issue here is whether the Tribe’s claims address one or more specific statutory obligations, as in Mitchell II, at the level of fiduciary duty whose breach is compensable in damages. The Tribe has pleaded such duty, the record shows that the Tribe has a case to try, and I respectfully dissent.
