HB 148: Paying Private Legal Fees with Public Dollars — 2025
ICL's position: Oppose
Current Bill Status: Senate Floor
Issue Areas: Grazing, Livestock, Public Lands, Stockwater, Water, Water Rights
House Bill 148 is yet another attempt to encourage the State of Idaho to pay the private legal fees for Joyce Livestock Company and LU Ranching Company. The fees resulted from a lawsuit filed by the Owyhee Count ranchers against the federal government that wrapped up way back in 2007.
It’s a complicated case involving who gets to hold water rights when the United States government leases public lands for grazing.
The Idaho Supreme Court ruling held that the federal government was not entitled to hold stockwater rights (i.e. when cattle drink from streams on grazing allotments). Instead, the ruling found that only ranchers, who owned the cows, were eligible to hold those water rights.
Now, despite constitutional prohibitions on the expenditure of public funds for the benefit of private interests, Rep. Chris Bruce (R-Kuna) has proposed a bill that would force the Constitutional Defense Council (CDC) to consider paying the $600,000+ legal fee for these private parties. The CDC is made up for the Governor, Attorney General, House Speaker and Senate President Pro Tem, and is charged with paying for the losing side in legal battles…something that the Idaho Legislature is doing quite often these days.
As a reminder, in 2009 the Office of the Attorney General wrote a letter to one of the cattle companies explaining how use of the CDC could not constitutionally and legally cover these fees. It was unconstitutional then, and it’s unconstitutional now. (They’ve tried this several times before, by the way.)
How much have taxpayers already spent??
As of 2024, Idaho taxpayers have spent over $1.625 million to increase funding for IDWR to process these stockwater claims, and the AG also paid to defend a related stock water lawsuit from the Department of Justice, and the Legislature successfully also intervened, with private lawyers making somewhere around $500/hour ($$$). So far this year, we’ve spent at least $100,000 in legal fees on the case.
An additional ~$265,000 was included in the FY2024 IDWR budget, and of the total 18,000 claims that could have been filed, as of 2024 fewer than a dozen ranchers filed a grand total of 254 claims. So far, Idaho has already spent millions trying to control water rights from the feds that most ranchers don’t seem to care about. Maybe the spigots will never turn off?