CLACKAMAS COUNTY, OREGON, APPELLANT,

v.

DOUGLAS MCKAY, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, ET AL., APPELLEES

Acts of Congress were "compacts” with Oregon, upon which that State relied in her plans for development. It says the transfer of lands to the Department of Agriculture threatens a reduction in income to it from the lands. It says, therefore, the Act of 1954 is a taking without compensation or due process.

The basic difficulty with the argument is that it confuses sovereign authority over lands within the borders of a sovereignty with the ownership of such lands. Our problem deals with ownership. These lands are clearly property of the United States. At all times since the admission of Oregon to the Union they have been either property of the United States or property of the railroad. The interest of Oregon was in the attraction of settlers to the lands and the placement of the lands on the tax rolls. When the lands revested in the United States8 Congress provided for the payments from the revenues as a means of meeting the tremendous disappointment and loss suffered by Oregon, but the provision was by way of meeting a moral or ethical obligation rather than a legal one.

When the United States acquires, by eminent domain or otherwise, a tract of land in a State, it becomes the owner, and thereafter disposition is within the unfettered discretion of the Congress. No overriding sovereign governmental authority of the State impinges upon that discretion or gives rise to power on the part of courts to interfere with that disposition. Such is the case at bar. In ultimate analysis the County complains of a threat of damage which it fears, rather than an actual injury. But in any event the public domain in Oregon passed to the United States when Oregon was admitted. Such a provision was implicit in the Act of admission.9 The 1916 and 1937 Acts of the Congress were in no sense compacts but were statutes relating to disposition of federal public property. No taking is involved in the 1954 Act. And of course the courts cannot interfere with the administration of public property as arranged by the Congress and the Executive, so long as constitutional boundaries are not transgressed by either branch or statutory ones by the latter. The judgment of the District Court dismissing the complaint is

Affirmed.

. Clackamas County, Or. v. McKay, 108 U.S.App.D.C. 94, 219 F. 2d 479, judgment vacated as moot, 349 U.S. 909, 75 S.Ct. 599 (1955).

. 68 Stat. 270, 43 U.S.C.A. §§ 1181g-1181j.

. 50 Stat 874.

. Supra note 1, 94 TJ.S.App.D.C. at 127, 219 E.2d at 498 (On Petition for Rehearing).

. Oregon & O. R. Oo. v. United States, 238 U.S. 393, 35 S.Ot. 908, 59 L.Ed. 1360 (1915).

. Act of June 9, 1916, 39 Stat. 218.

. Supra note 3.

. Act of June 9, 1916, as amended by Act of Aug. 28, 1937, both supra.

. Act of Feb. 14, 1859, 11 Stat. 383, 384, especially the clauses reciting grants of land to the State and the clause “that said State shall never interfere with the primary disposal of the soil within the same by the United States,” the latter in light of Gibson v. Chouteau, 13 Wall. 92, 99, 80 U.S. 92, 99, 20 L.Ed. 534 (1871).