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Understanding key legal limits on permitting: insights for tribes, developers, and landowners
On November 14, 2025, the Alaska Supreme Court issued its opinion in Orutsararmiut Native Council v. Boyle.1 The focus of this dispute centered on several permits that the Alaska Department of Natural Resources ("DNR") issued to Donlin Gold LLC ("Donlin"). These permits are necessary for the development of a proposed gold mine on lands owned by a regional and a village corporation created pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act ("ANCSA"). Specifically, the permits granted Donlin the right to use state waters and to construct and operate a natural gas pipeline over state lands. When analyzing the relevant statutory factors for its permitting decisions, DNR focused on the impacts that these permits might have on the state resources themselves (i.e., the water appropriation and the pipeline lease); DNR did not examine the potential impacts associated with the development and operation of the mine itself.
The Dispute
The plaintiffs, representing local tribes, argued that DNR violated Article VIII of the Alaska Constitution, which "mandates that natural resources belonging to the State are to be made available for maximum use consistent with the public interest."2 In Sullivan v. Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), the Court noted its "duty to ensure constitutional principles are followed,"3 finding that "article VIII requires the State to take a hard look at all factors material and relevant to the public interest, which necessarily includes considering the cumulative impacts of a project."4
While in REDOIL the Court used broad language to describe this constitutional mandate, the Boyle Court clarified that these requirements did not extend to projects that "entail[] the development of privately owned resources on private lands."5 The Court explicitly discussed the relevance of this decision for other ANCSA corporations, who were transferred surface and subsurface estates across Alaska as compensation for the loss of Aboriginal title, concluding that "[t]hese lands and minerals are reserved for their benefit, not for the benefit of Alaskans generally."6
Takeaways
The Court's opinion indicates that the state will still have a role in regulating the development of resources on private lands. For example, the legislature could revise the statutory factors that DNR must consider when issuing permits, even to require DNR to evaluate the cumulative impacts of projects on private lands. The clarification here is that private landowners, developers, and the state need not look directly to constitutional principles when making these types of permitting decisions for projects on privately owned lands.
Footnotes
1 2025 WL 3187314, at *1 (Alaska Nov. 14, 2025).
2 Id. at *12 (cleaned up) (citations omitted).
3 311 P.3d 625, 626 (Alaska 2013).
4 2025 WL 3187314, at *12 (cleaned up) (quoting REDOIL, 311 P.3d at 635).
5 Id. at *13.
6 Id. at *14.
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