SCOTUS Rejects National Park Service’s Attempt to Regulate River in Alaskan Preserve

Environmental attorney Ariel Stavitsky authored a federal case summary for the Oregon Real Estate and Land Use Digest titled “SCOTUS Rejects National Park Service’s Attempt to Regulate River in Alaskan Preserve.” The article examines Sturgeon v. Frost, in which an Alaskan hunter using an amphibious hovercraft on a river in a federal preserve was stopped by park rangers for violating a National Park Service regulation that they asserted prohibits hovercrafts on rivers within any federal preserve or park. The hunter sued the Park Service on the basis that the federal regulation did not apply on the state-owned river.

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) sets aside numerous national parks, monuments, and preserves in the state, within which exists a large area of state, Native and private lands, or “inholdings.” The dispute centered on whether there is an exception in those areas over the general authority of the National Park Service to oversee boating and related activities in federally managed preservation areas.

After a dismissal of the suit by a lower court, in 2016 the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously in favor of the hunter on the basis that the river is defined as a “non-public” land by ANILCA and there exist no other grounds on which the Park Service would have authority to regulate the river if it isn’t defined as public.

Stavitsky notes that the decision in the case is narrow, largely dependent on “Alaska’s specific and largely idiosyncratic historical and legal development,” and the suit would have had little chance of success in any other state. She concludes: “Still, even in the lower 48, the case provides valuable insight into the Court’s current leanings on principles of federalism, federal lands, reserved water rights doctrine, and statutory construction generally.”