510
Opinion of the Court
port that assertion, the Tribe points to various Government reports identifying 20 percent as the appropriate royalty, see id., at 5-7, 15, and to the Secretary's decision, made after receiving ex parte communications from Peabody, to withhold departmental action, see id., at 9-10, 15.
In the circumstances presented, the Tribe maintains, the Secretary's eventual approval of the 121/2 percent royalty violated his duties under § 396a in two ways. First, the Secretary's approval was "improvident," Tr. of Oral Arg. 48, because it allowed the Tribe's coal "to be conveyed for what [the Secretary] knew to be about half of its value," id., at 49. Second, Secretary Hodel's intervention into the Lease adjustment process "skewed the bargaining" by depriving the Tribe of the 20 percent rate, rendering the Secretary's subsequent approval of the 121/2 percent rate "unfair." Id., at 50.
The Tribe's vigorously pressed arguments headlining § 396a fare no better than its arguments tied to § 399 and the IMDA; the § 396a arguments fail, for they assume substantive prescriptions not found in that provision.13 As to the
"improviden[ce]" of the Secretary's approval, the Tribe can point to no guides or standards circumscribing the Secretary's affirmation of coal mining leases negotiated between a Tribe and a private lessee. Regulations under the IMLA in effect in 1987 established a minimum royalty of ten cents per ton. See 25 CFR § 211.15(c) (1985). But the royalty contained in Lease 8580 well exceeded that regulatory floor.
13 The Lease itself authorized the Secretary to make "reasonable [royalty] adjustment[s]." App. 194. As noted above, however, see supra, at 501, n. 9, the Court of Federal Claims determined, and the Tribe does not here dispute, that the Secretary is not a signatory to the Lease and that the Lease is not contractually binding on him. See 46 Fed. Cl., at 234- 236. We thus perceive no basis for infusing the Secretary's approval function under § 396a with substantive standards that might be derived from his adjustment authority under the Lease, and certainly no basis for concluding that an alleged "breach" of those standards is cognizable in an action for money damages under the Indian Tucker Act.
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