Opinion of the Court
law). So those areas are no longer subject to the Service’s power over “System units” and the “water located within” them. §100751(a), (b). Instead, only the federal property in system units is subject to the Service’s authority.[1] And that is just what Section 103(c)’s second sentence pronounces, for waters and lands alike. Again, that sentence says that no state, Native, or private lands “shall be subject to the regulations applicable solely to public lands within [system] units.” 16 U. S. C. §3103(c). The sentence thus expressly states the consequence of the statute’s prior “deeming.” The Service’s rules will apply exclusively to public lands (meaning federally owned lands and waters) within system units. The rules cannot apply to any non-federal properties, even if a map would show they are within such a unit’s boundaries. Geographic inholdings thus become regulatory outholdings, impervious to the Service’s ordinary authority.[2]
- ↑ At times, the Park Service has argued here that the Organic Act gives it authority to regulate waters outside system units, so long as doing so protects waters or lands inside them. See Brief for Respondents 28–32. If so, the argument goes, that authority would similarly permit the Service to regulate the non-federally owned waters that Section 103(c) has deemed outside Alaskan system units, if and when needed to conserve those units’ federal waters or lands. But at other points in this litigation, the Service has all but disclaimed such out-of-the-park regulatory authority. See No. 14–1209, Tr. of Oral Arg. 58 (Jan. 20, 2016) (“The Park Service [has] consistently understood its authority to be regulating [within] the park’s boundaries. It’s never sought to enact a regulation outside of the park’s boundaries”). We take no position on the question because it has no bearing on the hovercraft rule at issue here. That rule, by its express terms, applies only inside system units. See supra, at 10–11. It therefore does not raise any question relating to the existence or scope of the Service’s authority over water outside system units.
- ↑ Another provision of ANILCA reflects that result. Right after Sections 201 and 202 describe each new or expanded system unit by reference to how many acres of public land it contains, see n. 4, supra, Section 203 authorizes the Park Service to administer, under the Organic Act, the areas listed in “the foregoing sections.” §410hh–2. In
