Professor Frank talks to KQED about Trump administration’s legal challenge to state’s federal-lands law

An April 10 story on the website for San Francisco’s KQED public television station quotes Professor of Environmental Practice Richard Frank ’74 about the Trump administration’s legal challenge to a 2017 California law that allows the state to intervene in the sale of public lands.

The law, aimed at preventing the federal government from selling land to large oil and gas companies, gives the state first right of refusal, enabling it to meet the sale price another purchaser has offered. Even if the state does not opt to buy the property, the purchaser still needs its approval for the sale, or the transfer cannot be recorded in a county records office.

The U.S. Constitution’s Property Clause restricts states from interfering with federal land disposal. Professor Frank characterized the state’s focus on the purchaser as an attempt to circumvent this clause.

“California may try to advance this argument, but I’m not sure that’s a persuasive or powerful argument,” Frank told KQED online. “A federal judge might well conclude that the state of California can’t do indirectly what the state can’t do directly.”