A major Alaska Supreme Court decision undermined the state’s ability to run a rural subsistence priority.
The Alaska Supreme Court held that a rural preference conflicted with the Alaska Constitution’s common use / equal access concepts (as interpreted by the court). This made the state unable to fully implement ANILCA’s rural priority statewide under state law as then structured.
This is a hinge event that turns subsistence into a long-running federal-state tug-of-war—and helps explain why shareholders often see “the system” as structurally stacked and confusing.