That's a legal argument Cliven Bundy made in court, based upon Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 44 U.S. 3 How. 212 212 (1845), in which the U.S. Supreme Court addressed lands ceded to the United States from Virginia and Georgia to discharge debt incurred by those states during the Revolutionary War. The USSC ruled that that the United States held this land in trust for the establishment of future states.
Subsequently, federal courts have ruled that Pollard's Lessee was based on the fact that Virginia and Georgia were sovereign entities before becoming states, and specifically ruled in four cases that it did not apply to land in the State of Nevada, because the U.S. owned the land before Nevada became a state.
Granted, but what did the documents regarding statehood say about the fed’s land ownership? Wasn’t there some sort of provision where the feds were supposed to give more of the land to the state?
I just can’t remember exactly, but I thought I read something to that effect, and that the feds had never fulfilled their part of that agreement.