Case No. 17-949 | 9th Cir.
Preview by Clay Wild
At issue in this case is whether the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (“ANILCA”) prohibits the National Park Service (“NPS”) from regulating State, Native Corporation, and private land located within the National Park System in Alaska.
In 2007, NPS rangers found John Sturgeon repairing his hovercraft along a river that runs through the National Park System in Alaska. The rangers informed Sturgeon that it was against the law to operate a hovercraft in the area. In response, Sturgeon asserted that the prohibition did not apply because he was on an Alaska-owned waterway. Sturgeon acquiesced, though he eventually filed suit challenging the NPS’s authority to prohibit hovercrafts in the area.
ANILCA provides, in part, for NPS regulatory jurisdiction over “public lands” located in protected areas known as “conservation system unit[s]” (“CSU”). 16 U.S.C. § 3103(c) (2018). However, § 3103(c) of the statute excludes from NPS jurisdiction any land found within a CSU that is “conveyed to the State, to any Native Corporation, or to any private party.” Id.
Sturgeon’s primary argument is that ANILCA’s plain text forbids the NPS from exerting authority over Alaska-owned land physically located in a CSU. Pointing to § 3102, he says “public lands” are defined as those to which the federal government holds “title.” Id. § 3102(2)–(3). Sturgeon also relies on the statute’s history and structure to suggest its intent is to exclude State, Native Corporation, and private lands from federal jurisdiction, and suggests that allowing the NPS to regulate these lands would violate basic tenets of federalism. To counter the respondents’ argument that another statute authorizing broad NPS jurisdiction over all navigable waters supersedes § 3103(c), Sturgeon offers “that a specific statute controls over a general one.” Bulova Watch Co. v. United States, 365 U.S. 753, 758 (1961). He also disagrees with the respondents’ contention that NPS can rely on the Commerce Clause for authority because Congress did not expressly assert such authority in passing ANILCA.
The parties disagree about the Ninth Circuit’s reliance on the “reserved water rights” doctrine to uphold the NPS’s authority. See Sturgeon v. Frost, 872 F.3d 927 (2017). The doctrine, according to Sturgeon, only allows the federal government to use a certain amount of water to achieve specified federal objectives—an authorization that does not amount to holding title and therefore cannot be used to qualify such water as “public land.” The respondents counter that ANILCA’s definition of public lands includes those waters in which the United States has an interest under the doctrine, as it does here.
The respondents suggest that ANILCA’s original purpose was to protect and preserve rivers and waterways found in CSUs, and that denying the NPS jurisdiction here would thus pervert the statute’s intent. NPS’s authority to regulate the area in question, the respondents argue, is broadly conferred by Congress under 54 U.S.C. § 100751(b) (2018), which allows the federal government to make rules “relating to water located within [CSUs].” Finally, the respondents note that section 3103(c) was merely a technical correction to the original statute, and that Congress would not have stripped an agency of its authority through such a seemingly minor revision.