Opinion of the Court
then the regulation shall not apply to a park’s non-public lands. But if instead the regulation covers public and non-public lands alike, then the second sentence has nothing to say: The regulation can indeed cover both. See ibid. The Park Service labels that sentence a “tailored limitation” on its authority over inholdings. Ibid. And it concludes that the sentence has no bearing on the hovercraft rule, which expressly applies “without regard to… ownership.” 36 CFR §1.2(a)(3).
But on the Park Service’s view, Section 103(c)’s second sentence is a mere truism, not any kind of limitation (however “tailored”). Once again: It tells Alaskans, so the Park Service says, that rules applying only to public lands… will apply only to public lands. And that rules applying to both public and non-public lands… will apply to both. (Or, to say the same thing, but with approximate statutory definitions plugged in: It tells Alaskans that rules applying only to the Federal Government’s lands… will apply only to the Federal Government’s lands. And that rules applying to federal, state, Native, and private lands alike… will apply to them all.) In short, under the Park Service’s reading, Section 103(c)’s second sentence does nothing but state the obvious. Its supposed exemption does not in fact exempt anyone from anything to which they would otherwise be subject. Remove the sentence from ANILCA and everything would be precisely the same. For it curtails none of the Service’s ordinary regulatory authority over inholdings.[1]
- ↑ And just to pile on: Even taken as a truism, the Park Service’s view of the second sentence misfires, because of the technical difference between “public lands” and federally owned lands in ANILCA. Recall that “public lands” is defined in the statute to mean most but not all federally owned lands: The term excludes those federal lands selected for future transfer to the State or Native Corporations. See §3102(3); supra, at 9–10. (That is why when we reframed the Park Service’s argument just above, we noted that we were using “approximate”
