Alaska Legislature will support state’s bootlegging penalties in front of U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court on April 9, 2026. (Ashley Murray/States Newsroom

By James Brooks

Alaska Beacon

The Alaska Legislature will join Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration in seeking to defend the state’s anti-bootlegging punishments in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Thursday, the joint House-Senate Legislative Council voted to hire an outside attorney to draft a friend-of-the-court letter — formally known as an amicus brief — in support of the state and against Ken Jouppi, a former Bush pilot whose plane was seized after a bootlegging conviction.

Jouppi has repeatedly challenged that seizure, saying it represents an illegal punishment because it is out of proportion to the crime he committed. 

The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the seizure in 2025, but Jouppi appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed earlier this year to hear the case. Oral arguments are expected in December.

The Legislative Council has frequently clashed with Dunleavy over the governor’s interpretations of state law and the Alaska Constitution and has funded multiple lawsuits against the governor, but on this case, the state’s executive and Legislature are aligned.

The state Department of Law, which is defending the state’s anti-bootlegging laws, requested in late August that legislators get involved with the issue.

“At its core,” wrote Senior Assistant Attorney General Kaci Schroeder in a memo to the Legislative Council, “the case implicates an important legislative judgment: how seriously Alaska may treat the illegal importation of alcohol into communities that have affirmatively chosen to prohibit it, and what sanctions the Legislature may impose to deter individuals from using aircraft to circumvent those local decisions.”

Schroeder wrote that Alaska’s penalties for bootlegging were the result of the Legislature “responding to the real-world consequences of local alcohol abuse.”

Having the Legislature provide its input could help the Supreme Court understand Alaska’s historic concerns over alcohol and the role that Bush planes have in serving rural Alaska.

The Legislature’s hired attorney is expected to send its letter to the Supreme Court by mid-October, said Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau and chair of the Legislative Council.

• James Brooks Cascade is a longtime Alaska reporter who lives in Juneau. He previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.