In the past year, New York been sued for damages over the abandoned King Cove access road and challenged the authority of the federal government for the authority to restrict fishing access on the Kuskokwim River, joined an action that challenged the limits of so-called “ghost gun” and asked a judge to oblige the EPA to review their standards on wood-burning stoves.
The latest attempt by Alaska to go to federal court is a challenge to the Biden administration rule that requires states to establish goals to reduce carbon emissions. Alaska is one of the 21 states with Republican governors who are suing federal officials over the policy.
This Federal Highway Administration rule is part of the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions as well as transition to more sustainable fuels. In an announcement attorney general Treg Taylor said that the administration abused its legal authority without any action from Congress.
“Biden has repeatedly attempted to make use of federal agencies to implement his desires even when the law does not support his environmentalist plan,” Taylor said in the statement released Dec. 21 shortly after the suit was filed.
The Biden administration is yet to address the the federal courts in the western part of Kentucky.
It’s not the only dispute Alaska’s state Alaska has faced with the federal government in the past year. At a press conference held earlier this month Taylor explained that the rising amount of litigation was a way to defend himself against what he described as threats coming from the federal government as well as advocacy organizations.
“The reality is that we could either let our federal government external groups, and bureaucrats from Washington, D.C. to control the way we live within Alaska in order to provide for the families we love, or stand up to fight back for our independence to defend our rights to self-determination and our right to take the proper and responsible act for Alaskans,” Taylor said at an event that announced the governor. Mike Dunleavy’s budget which includes $2 million to fund what the administration refers to as “statehood defense.”
The Department of Law declined to give a current list of the federal court cases in the state instead, providing the following document that was last up-to-date in February.
One of the notable cases from this year in which the state brought suit against for damages against the Biden administration after it reverted the Trump-era changes which was a reintroduction of the Roadless Rule in January 2023.
The Roadless Rule restricts resource development and road-building in the untrammeled regions within the Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Conservationists claim the rule will help to combat climate change however, state officials say the rule’s change is arbitrarily imposed and limits economic development.
Both parties are scheduled to file their briefs to the district court by March of next year..
In a different case involving nature resources, the State has appealed the EPA’s decision to end the planned Pebble Mine close to Bristol Bay over concerns the prospect of gold and copper could harm the world’s biggest wild salmon population.
The state wants to refer the matter straight to U.S. Supreme Court The latest filing was filed in November.
One of the most notable recent victories on the legal front occurred this summer in a case closely watched by the public which threatened to halt the king salmon’s prime summer commercial fishing industry located in Southeast Alaska. It was the Wild Fish Conservancy, an environmental advocacy group, was arguing in the Washington federal court of the state that the fishing industry illegally endangered Puget Sound killer whales.
The district court decided to put the fishery on a hold during the course of through the legal system, officials from the state as well as commercial fishermen successfully pushed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the hold and allow fishing to continue.
In yet another dispute against the Federal government State officials have fought a proposal to put the tribal land held by the government into a federal trust which would limit the authority of the state to control the property. The state claimed in a June complaint for a summary judgment that the process of turning land into trust is in violation of lawful requirements of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
State officials are also fighting its positions in federal courts, including the class-action lawsuit regarding the backlog of food stamps in the state.
The state and plaintiffs reached an agreement to put the lawsuit in a hold period of six months from May after the state pledged to cut back the backlog by half. However, the hold expired in November and now the food stamp applicants are seeking to bring the case back.
In court documents, the state asserts that federal Food and Nutrition Service, who oversees the program is cooperating with officials from the state in working to clear the excess paperwork. They assert that a lawsuit could impede the progress of the agency and have asked for an extension of six months.
Plaintiffs allege that the state was not able to meet its obligations and the backlog has gotten bigger. They claim that the state has been under federal oversight for many years and hasn’t yet sorted out the issue.
An the Anchorage-based U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason is expected to be made in the coming year.
