Cite as: 508 U. S. 1 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court.
The McCarran Amendment allows a State to join the United States as a defendant in a comprehensive water right adjudication. 66 Stat. 560, 43 U. S. C. § 666(a). This case arises from Idaho's joinder of the United States in a suit for the adjudication of water rights in the Snake River. Under Idaho Code § 42-1414 (1990), all water right claimants, including the United States, must pay "filing fees" when they submit their notices of claims. Idaho collects these fees to "financ[e] the costs of adjudicating water rights," § 42-1414; the United States estimates that in its case the fees could exceed $10 million. We hold that the McCarran Amendment does not waive the United States' sovereign immunity from fees of this kind.
Discovered by the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Snake River—the "Mississippi of Idaho"—is 1,038 miles long and the principal tributary to the Columbia River. It rises in the mountains of the Continental Divide in northwest Wyoming and enters eastern Idaho through the Palisades Reservoir. Near Heise, Idaho, the river leaves the mountains and meanders westerly across southern Idaho's Snake River plain for the entire breadth of the State—some 400 miles. On the western edge of Idaho, near Weiser, the Snake enters Oregon for a while and then turns northward, forming the Oregon-Idaho boundary for 216 miles. In this stretch, the river traverses Hells Canyon, the Nation's deepest river gorge. From the northeastern corner of Oregon, the river marks the Washington-Idaho boundary until Lewiston, Idaho, where it bends westward into Washington and finally flows into the Columbia just south of Pasco, Washington. From elevations of 10,000 feet, the Snake descends to 3,000 feet and, together with its many tributaries, provides the only water for most of Idaho. See generally T. Palmer, The Snake River (1991).
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