There’s been a fair amount of chatter in the national and regional news as well as among fly fishers since the Supreme Count of the United States issued their ruling on the 22nd in the PPL Montana, LLC v. Montana case.
From the SCOTUSblog’s ‘Opinion Analysis: Montana Dunked on Riverbeds’ yesterday (probably the best summary available as of this morning)…
The state of Montana has been rebuffed in its efforts to claim title to riverbeds in Montana where privately owned hydro-electric dams are located. The legal issues were narrow. All agreed that the state holds title to the beds of rivers that were navigable in fact at statehood. If the river was not navigable at statehood, title remains in the United States, and the riverbed could be disposed of by sale or grant as part of the federal public domain. The principal question before the Court concerned discrete segments of otherwise-navigable rivers which were sufficiently obstructed that commercial travelers had to portage around them. Did the need to portage mean the river segment was not navigable? In a unanimous opinion by Justice Kennedy in PPL Montana, LLC v. Montana, the Court answered in the affirmative: The need to portage defeats navigability for purposes of establishing state title, unless the portage was so short the segment would have no commercial value.
And this…
The key legal conclusions in PPL Montana are that navigability must be determined segment by segment, and that river segments which are sufficiently obstructed that travelers must portage are not navigable. The justification for these conclusions, Justice Kennedy explains, lies in the historical rationale for giving the state title to submerged lands under tidal waters and waters that are navigable in fact. “[A] contrary rule,” he said, “would allow private riverbed owners to erect improvements on the riverbeds that could interfere with the public’s right to use the waters as a highway for commerce.” In contrast, no commerce would occur on segments that were obstructed. “Thus, there is no reason that these segments also should be deemed owned by the State under the equal-footing doctrine.”
While simply haven’t had time to pick the brains of the legal eagles in our fold as to the true nuts and bolts of the opinion, it’s probably most important to note that the case has been remanded back to the Montana court to be reconsidered in light of the SCOTUS ruling on navigability.
From our absolutely uneducated legal viewpoint, which is worth next to nothing by the way, we’d agree with Robin Cunningham writing over on the FOAM blog that for now, Montana’s Stream Access Law appears intact, though the story is far, far from over.
For those wanting to dig a little deeper, here are a few links for your reading pleasure….
- Regional reporting from the Billings Gazette and the Great Falls Tribune.
- The full SCOTUS opinion.
- Post this morning from Tim Mulvaney at the Environmental Law Prof blog.
Much more to come as the dust settles…
