United States Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Assn.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Appalachian Trail's path through a national forest does not convert the underlying forest land into National Park System land, meaning the Forest Service could lawfully issue a pipeline permit allowing a natural gas line to tunnel 600 feet beneath the Trail.
The decision turned on a foundational distinction between a trail — which the Court treated as an easement, a limited right to use the land — and the land itself, which the Court said remained under the Forest Service's authority.
How it got here: The Forest Service issued a pipeline permit; environmental groups challenged it in the Fourth Circuit, which vacated the permit; the Forest Service and Atlantic Coast Pipeline then asked the Supreme Court to reverse.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Atlantic Coast Pipeline sought to build a 604-mile natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to North Carolina. The route crossed 16 miles of the George Washington National Forest, and one short segment would pass 600 feet underground beneath the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. The Forest Service issued the required permit. Environmental groups sued, arguing the Mineral Leasing Act bars pipeline permits on National Park System land and that the Appalachian Trail — administered by the National Park Service — had become exactly that kind of land.
The question before the Court
Can the Forest Service grant a natural gas pipeline right-of-way through national forest land that the Appalachian Trail crosses, even though a federal law bars pipeline permits on lands within the National Park System?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Forest Service had authority to issue the permit. The Court held that giving the National Park Service responsibility for administering the Appalachian Trail conveyed only an easement — a limited right to use the land for trail purposes — not jurisdiction over the national forest land beneath the Trail. That land remained under the Forest Service's jurisdiction and thus qualified as "Federal lands" subject to a pipeline permit under the Mineral Leasing Act. The Leasing Act's carve-out for "lands in the National Park System" never applied.
The Court rejected the argument that the Interior Department's internal decision to assign Trail administration to the Park Service (rather than the Bureau of Land Management) silently brought thousands of miles of forest land — and state and private land along the Trail — into the National Park System. Absent a clear congressional command for such a sweeping transfer of jurisdiction, basic property law principles and the Trails Act's own text (which speaks of "rights-of-way," not land transfers) confirmed that a trail easement and the land beneath it remain legally distinct.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Pipeline and infrastructure companies seeking to cross national forest land beneath a national scenic trail may obtain permits from the Forest Service, because the trail's designation and its federal administrator (the National Park Service) do not legally transform the underlying forest land into National Park System land. Environmental groups cannot use that carve-out in the Mineral Leasing Act to block such permits on forest land alone.
What changes now
The case was sent back to the Fourth Circuit for further proceedings. The Supreme Court resolved only the Mineral Leasing Act pipeline-permit question; other challenges to the pipeline — including claims under the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act — remain alive and were not addressed by the Supreme Court's ruling. Those issues return to the lower courts for resolution.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the pipeline might separately violate the National Park Service's easement rights over the Trail corridor — it expressly reserved that question. The ruling also does not address the pipeline's compliance with environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, which the Fourth Circuit addressed separately and which were not before the Supreme Court.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg joined the full majority opinion except for Part III-B-2, which addresses the argument that respondents' theory depends on a silent executive-branch delegation having vast, unspoken effects on federal jurisdiction. She agreed with the judgment and with the core holding that the Trail easement did not transfer Forest Service jurisdiction over the underlying land, but did not join the majority's analysis rejecting that delegation-based argument on its own terms.
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor argued that the majority's private-law easement analysis is beside the point: the federal government owns all the land involved, so state-law easement principles are inapposite. The plain text of the Park Service Organic Act defines National Park System lands as 'any area of land administered by' the Park Service — a definition that clearly covers the Appalachian Trail, which the Park Service has administered for 50 years and has consistently described as a Park System unit comprising hundreds of thousands of acres. She would have affirmed the Fourth Circuit and blocked the pipeline permit.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The dispositive question was whether the national forest land beneath the Appalachian Trail had been transferred out of the Forest Service's jurisdiction and into the National Park System — because the Mineral Leasing Act bars pipeline permits only on National Park System land, not on all federal land.
- The Court applied basic property law to the Trails Act's framework. A right-of-way is a type of easement — a limited, nonpossessory right to use another's land for a specific purpose. An easement does not transfer ownership; the original owner retains the land itself. The Trails Act repeatedly uses the term 'rights-of-way' to describe the interests granted to the National Park Service over national forest segments of the Trail, so those interests carried only easement-level authority, not a transfer of jurisdiction over the land.
- The duties assigned to the Park Service under the Trails Act reinforced this reading: the Park Service administers the Trail 'primarily as a footpath,' sets trail uses, posts markers, and issues trail regulations — but if a tree falls across the Trail on national forest land, it is the Forest Service that removes it. These responsibilities are those of an easement administrator, not a land owner.
- Congress knows how to explicitly transfer land between federal agencies and has done so in many other statutes — the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, for instance, expressly provides that certain river corridors 'shall become a part of the National Park System.' The Trails Act uses 'rights-of-way' language instead, confirming Congress did not intend a land transfer when it created the Appalachian Trail.
- The environmental groups' theory required concluding — without any clear congressional signal — that an internal executive-branch delegation decision (the Interior Department's choice to assign the Trail to the Park Service rather than the Bureau of Land Management) expanded the Park Service's jurisdiction over all 21 national scenic and historic trails it administers, including large tracts of state and private land. The Court held that such a vast regulatory shift requires explicit congressional authorization.
- The Trails Act itself reinforced this conclusion with a proviso stating that 'nothing contained in this chapter shall be deemed to transfer among Federal agencies any management responsibilities' for federally administered trail lands — making plain that Congress did not intend the Act to shift jurisdiction from the Forest Service to the Park Service.