Editor’s Note: This is a breaking news story and may be updated.
Corner crossing will not have its day in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court justices announced Oct. 20 that it will not hear the Wyoming case, which has broad impacts for public land access across the West.
“It preserves a very important public access to public lands ruling from the 10th Circuit that ensures in checkerboarded lands, the public can reach the public lands,” said Casper, Wyo., attorney Ryan Semerad, who represents the appellees on the case.
Land in the West is divided into a checkerboard pattern between private and public land. So, in order to access some landlocked areas of public land, recreationists step over corners of private land, or corner cross.
Four hunters from Missouri did just that in 2021, crossing over a landowner’s property in Carbon County, Wyo.
The landowner, Fred Eshelman, sued the hunters, arguing that they trespassed and violated private airspace. Semerad represented those four hunters.
State and regional courts have since ruled that corner crossing is legal, since the hunters didn’t step foot on private property. So, the landowner appealed those decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court didn’t provide any explanation as to why it declined the case. The nation’s highest court only accepts a small percentage of the cases it receives.
Semerad said the court’s denial to review the previous ruling is a bit “bittersweet.”
“Our ruling is safe and preserved, but we did miss out on the opportunity to expand the reach of our victory,” he said.
If the Supreme Court had ruled in the hunters’ favor, the 10th Circuit Court ruling could have been expanded nationwide. Now, the ruling will only apply to the states in that circuit: Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas, along with the parts of Yellowstone National Park that stretch into Idaho and Montana.
The law is murkier in other states across the country.
Still, hunting, angling and outdoor recreation advocates have said this opens up millions of acres of otherwise landlocked public land.
The landowner’s attorney didn’t respond to requests to comment by publication time.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
