The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a Fairbanks pilot’s case after the state of Alaska seized his plane for loading beer onto a flight routed for a dry village.
The Alaska Supreme Court ruled last year that the state’s decision to confiscate Ken Jouppi’s $95,000 Cessna 206 did not constitute an excessive fine. Jouppi then sought an appeal to the nation’s highest court, which granted his petition Monday.
Jouppi, who's now retired, said in a brief phone interview that he was thrilled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case, which challenges the seizure of his Cessna under the U.S Constitution’s Excessive Fines Clause.
“I couldn’t even talk,” he said. “I was just absolutely elated that – you know, it’s been a long battle. It’s over 13 years now.”
Jouppi was convicted on a misdemeanor bootlegging charge over a decade ago after a jury found he ignored a six-pack of beer loaded onto a flight he was piloting to the village of Beaver. He was sentenced to three days in jail, and he and his company had to pay a fine of $1,500. After some ping-ponging between state trial and appellate courts, he also lost his plane as part of the conviction.
Jouppi said letting the case go earlier on would’ve been the easier and cheaper path forward, but that he wanted to keep the challenge alive.
“What it boils down to is that it’s not only my right to fight it. It’s my duty to fight it,” he said.
Jouppi is represented by libertarian-leaning nonprofit law group Institute for Justice. The firm celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to take the case in an online post Monday.
Mike Greenberg, an attorney for the institute, wrote that “Protection against excessive fines is one of our most critical constitutional safeguards, and it’s critical that the U.S. Supreme Court instruct lower courts to treat that right with the importance it deserves.”
In an emailed statement, Alaska Department of Law spokesperson Sam Curtis said the state supreme court got it right, and that the department hopes the nation’s highest court will agree.
Curtis said that alcohol can bring outsized harm to remote Alaska Native villages that, by local vote, are dry. He wrote “we will continue to defend those communities’ authority through enforcing appropriate consequences for breaking those laws.”