Homestead Fraud and the Limits of Government Power
A landmark federal court ruling questions whether departmental regulations can be enforced as criminal law.
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United States District Judge Hanford laid down the principle that regulations of government departments are not laws in the sense that their violation can be punished as a felony. The decision came in the case of Charles D. Ott of Portland, who was prosecuted for perjury in making homestead entry affidavits for lands near Prosser, Washington. The affidavit was required by the Interior Department, but not by any act of Congress. The court ruled that only Congress can make laws, and department regulations, while binding for applicants, do not carry the weight of felony statutes if violated. Testimony suggested the homestead claims were fake, with one cabin housing a dead horse rather than a settler.
“The testimony was to the effect that one of the cabins appeared never to have been occupied, and that the other had been occupied by a dead horse a large part of the time.”
This case highlights the early twentieth-century legal struggle to define the power of the administrative state. It also exposes the rampant abuse of the Homestead Act, where land was often grabbed by speculators rather than actual settlers, a practice that fundamentally shaped the land ownership patterns of Eastern Washington.
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