Flying Crown Subdivision Addition No. 1 and Addition No. 2 Property Owners Association v. Alaska Railroad Corporation

When interpreting railroad rights-of-way granted by federal statutes, courts look to the condition of the country when the statutes were enacted, as well as the declared purpose of the rights-of-way, and must read all of their parts together. Leo Sheep Co. v. United States, 440 U.S. 668, 682 (1979). To that end, this Court has repeatedly held—most recently in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Tr. v. United States, 572 U.S. 93, 110 (2014)—that, because Congress made a “sharp change” in national policy in 1871 which ended generous land grants to railroads, a reference in a post-1871 statute to a railroad right-of-way must be construed to mean a “simple easement.” Such an easement gave a railroad a nonpossessory right to use another’s land for railroad purposes and no more. The Ninth Circuit here, however, concluded that a right-of-way reserved in 1950 under the 1914 Alaska Railroad Act reserved an “exclusive-use” easement as defined in the 1983 statute transferring the federal Alaska Railroad to the State of Alaska, 45 U.S.C. §§ 1201–14. This vested Respondent Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) with a possessory interest in Petitioner Flying Crown’s property, cloaking it with the rights of fee simple ownership—including the right to exclude Flying Crown and other property owners across Alaska from areas ARRC does not use. The question presented is: Whether railroad rights-of-way reserved under the 1914 Alaska Railroad Act are nonpossessory “simple easements” like other railroad rights-of-way conveyed after 1871 or “exclusive-use” easements as defined by a 1983 statute.