Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Bradly H. Cape, et al.

Between 1850 and 1870, Congress ceded millions of acres of public land in the West to railroads in a distinct checkerboard pattern of alternating public and private plats of land. The result of Congress’s peculiar land-grant scheme is that many parcels of public land in the checkerboard are landlocked and accessible only by “corner crossing”—the act of moving diagonally from the corner of one public parcel to another, trespassing through the adjoining private property in the process. Nearly fifty years ago, this Court unanimously rejected the government’s argument that Congress “implicitly reserved an easement to pass over the [privately-owned] sections in order to reach the [public] sections that were held by the Government” in the checkerboard. Leo Sheep Co. v. United States, 440 U.S. 668, 678 (1979). In Leo Sheep, that meant the government could not create public access to a Wyoming reservoir by clearing a dirt road that crossed two checkerboard corners—at least not without exercising the government’s power of eminent domain and paying just compensation. In 2021, four hunters corner crossed through Iron Bar’s property to hunt on public land; Iron Bar sued for trespass. In the decision below, the Tenth Circuit recognized that, under Wyoming law, the hunters had trespassed on Iron Bar’s property. The court nonetheless held that an 1885 federal statute governing fences—the Unlawful Inclosures Act—implicitly preempted Wyoming law and “functionally” created a “limited easement” across privately-held checkerboard land. The question presented is: Whether the Unlawful Inclosures Act implicitly preempts private landowners’ state-law property right to exclude in an area covering millions of acres of land throughout the West. (i)