- Details
- By Chez Oxendine
- Food | Agriculture
Alaska Native communities secured a victory in their fight to maintain federal subsistence fishing protections after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear Alaska's appeal, leaving in place a lower-court ruling that preserves decades of precedent.
The court declined to review Alaska v. U.S., which concerned the state’s authority to issue fishing openings that would conflict with existing federal subsistence rules, according to a Native American Rights Fund news release. By declining review, the high court allowed a Ninth Circuit decision to stand. As the state continues recovering from plummeting salmon populations, a federally-enforced priority for rural — primarily Alaska Natives — communities has limited the state’s ability to open fishing to others.
The Supreme Court’s refusal effectively ends decades of legal battles sometimes referred to as the “Katie John” cases after the Ahtna Athabascan elder who first challenged Alaska’s subsistence authority in 1985. John’s lawsuit, brought after the state denied her request to open fishing in her community, centered on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and its guarantee to prioritize rural communities relying on subsistence fishing over others.
John’s early 1990s victories, culminating in a 1995 ruling, established a precedent that handed control over that subsistence priority to the federal government due to its reserved water rights. That precedent was then reaffirmed in later cases in 2001 and 2014.The state’s most recent appeal sought to overturn those rulings and return control to Alaska, which argued that subsistence fishing should be open to anyone, not just rural communities.
“NARF filed Katie John’s first case in December 1985 and for 40 years has worked to protect the subsistence rights that sustain Alaska Native communities and cultures,” NARF Senior Staff Attorney Erin Dougherty Lynch said in a statement. “Today’s decision closes the door on decades of litigation aimed at eroding those rights.”
The conflict that led to this week’s decision began after years of declining salmon returns on the Kuskokwim River. According to court filings, managers restricted gillnet openings to rural residents during conservation periods to protect the remaining runs. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued overlapping emergency orders opening the same waters to all state residents, creating two sets of rules on the river at the same time.
The dispute began in 2021 when the state issued orders to open fishing that contradicted federal fisheries managers' decision to keep it closed during a salmon shortage.
Federal agencies and tribal organizations challenged the state’s actions, arguing that the river segments in question fall within the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge and are therefore subject to federal subsistence management. Alaska Native groups, including the Alaska Federation of Natives and the Association of Village Council Presidents, sided with the federal government.
A federal district judge agreed and issued an injunction preventing the state from issuing conflicting openings. The Ninth Circuit upheld that ruling in 2025 and rejected Alaska’s broader challenge to the federal subsistence framework, according to Courthouse News Service.
The appellate panel’s decision relied on the earlier Katie John rulings, which recognized federal authority over certain navigable waters connected to federal lands. Because the Supreme Court declined review, that Ninth Circuit ruling — and federal subsistence priority under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act — remains in force.
