June 24, 2025 — A dispute between Alaska and the federal government over subsistence fishing on the Kuskokwim River has led a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to consider whether decades-old precedent authorizing the federal government to control the state’s public lands should be upheld in light of recent Supreme Court decisions.
“This court should be free to reach its own decision and find that navigable waters are not public land under [ the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act],” argued John Michael Connolly, attorney with the Arlington-based Consovoy McCarthy Park firm representing Alaska.
In May 2021, the Federal Subsistence Board closed gillnet fishing of salmon along 180 miles of the Kuskokwim River in southwest Alaska for all but five days and to everyone but those who qualified as federal subsistence users. Days later, the state issued an emergency order allowing subsistence gillnet fishing along the river to all Alaskans on the same dates chosen by the board.
The federal government sued the state, arguing the state lacked the authority to override the Federal Subsistence Board’s orders.
In the district court, the state argued that the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act doesn’t permit the federal government to regulate fishing on state-owned navigable waters, but U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason, a Barack Obama appointee, sided with the federal government.
On appeal, the case has raised questions as to the scope of the federal government’s authority in the state and whether a longstanding series of binding precedents on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, known as the Katie John trilogy, should be overturned. The Katie John trilogy held that a reserved water right can make navigable waters public land.