Alaska vs. United States: Glacier Bay and Equal Footing

In Alaska v. United States, the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision on submerged lands in southeast Alaska, the federal government kept title to the underwater areas of Glacier Bay National Park and to pockets of seabed in the Alexander Archipelago that sit more than three miles from shore. The Court held that Congress had clearly reserved the Glacier Bay lands before statehood and that the archipelago’s channels did not qualify as inland waters.¹

What the Case Was About

The dispute was an original-jurisdiction action between Alaska and the United States covering two distinct areas of seabed in the southeast panhandle. The first was the submerged land inside what is now Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, originally set aside as a national monument. The second was the water and seabed around the Alexander Archipelago, a region of more than a thousand islands.¹

Alaska had entered the Union on January 3, 1959, under Presidential Proclamation No. 3269.² The question in each area was the same: did title to the seabed pass to the state at that moment, or had the federal government kept it?

Alaska’s Claim Under the Equal Footing Doctrine

Alaska relied on the Equal Footing Doctrine, under which a new state enters the Union with the same sovereign rights as the original thirteen, including presumptive title to lands beneath its navigable waters.³ To defeat that presumption, the United States had to show a clear intent, expressed before statehood, to keep the lands. The intent must be definitely declared or made very plain.¹

Why the Federal Government Kept Glacier Bay

The Court found that clear intent in Section 6(e) of the Alaska Statehood Act. Section 6(e) directs the transfer of federal property used to conserve fish and wildlife to the state but contains a proviso excluding lands already withdrawn or set apart as refuges or reservations for wildlife protection.⁴

Glacier Bay fit that exclusion. Proclamation No. 1733 established the monument in 1925, and Proclamation No. 2330 expanded it in 1939. Together they showed that the monument’s boundaries reached over submerged lands, and the Statehood Act’s proviso confirmed that Congress meant to keep them federal. Title to the underwater areas within the park therefore did not pass to Alaska.¹

Why the Alexander Archipelago Waters Weren’t Inland

The archipelago question turned on a different rule. Under the Submerged Lands Act, a state generally owns the seabed within three nautical miles of its coast. Alaska argued that the channels and straits threading the archipelago should count as inland waters, which would push the coastline seaward and sweep more seabed into state ownership.¹

The Court applied international standards and concluded the waters were not juridical bays, because they were not well-marked indentations in the coastline, and did not qualify as historic inland waters either. That result left certain enclaves of seabed, sitting more than three miles from the mainland or any island, on the federal side of the line.¹

What the Ruling Settled

The 2005 judgment resolved both title questions in favor of the United States. The submerged lands within Glacier Bay National Park remain under federal control, and the offshore pockets in the Alexander Archipelago that lie beyond the three-mile belt remain federal as well. Alaska’s Equal Footing claim was not enough to overcome the reservation Congress wrote into the Statehood Act, and the archipelago’s geography did not meet the tests that would have redrawn the coast in the state’s favor.¹

1
LII / Legal Information Institute. Alaska v. United States
2
National Archives. Proclamation 3269
3
Constitution Annotated. Equal Footing Doctrine and Submerged Lands
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Alaska Statehood Act – Section 6