Ken Jouppi’s plane sat in state custody for over a decade, and now the Supreme Court will decide if seizing it went too far

Ken Jouppi has spent 14 years fighting to keep his airplane after a passenger carried beer onto one of his flights, and the case is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Alaska bush pilot was flying a passenger and her groceries from Fairbanks to the dry village of Beaver on April 3, 2012, when state troopers searched the plane and found three cases of beer hidden in her luggage.

As detailed by Dexerto, Jouppi maintained that he had no knowledge of the alcohol, but he was still convicted of a misdemeanor and given the statutory minimum sentence of three days in jail and a $1,500 fine. Beaver had voted to prohibit the sale, importation, and possession of alcohol in 2004, making the beer illegal to bring into the village regardless of the passenger’s intentions.

The criminal case wrapped up years ago, but the fight over Jouppi’s 1969 Cessna U206D, worth about $95,000, has dragged on well past that point. Alaska moved to forfeit the plane entirely, and the aircraft, Jouppi’s main tool for his one-man air-taxi service, spent long stretches in state custody exposed to the elements before it was eventually returned to him.

The state’s own top court decided a six-pack was worth an airplane

The Alaska Supreme Court ultimately ruled that forfeiting the plane would not be unconstitutionally excessive, even if the offense involved only a single six-pack of beer. According to the Institute for Justice, the court reasoned that state lawmakers had determined the harm from even one six-pack “knowingly imported into a dry village” was severe enough to justify seizing an aircraft.

Jouppi is now partnering with the Institute for Justice to challenge that ruling before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the forfeiture violates the Constitution’s Excessive Fines Clause. That clause is meant to keep economic punishments proportionate to the severity of the underlying offense, a standard Jouppi’s attorneys argue Alaska’s courts failed to apply.

The dispute lands amid a broader stretch of stories this month about government overreach and accountability, including Elizabeth Warren pressing the Fed chair over a Vice Chair’s dinner with Wall Street bankers during a blackout period. It also follows a separate stretch of headlines out of Washington this week, as Trump weighed in on Iran talks, a reminder of how often federal power and its limits are making news right now.

“I’m thrilled that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear this case, because this case isn’t just about me or my airplane anymore,” Jouppi said, per his attorneys with the Institute for Justice. He added that he is in his eighties and has kept fighting because he sees it as his duty to ensure the Bill of Rights still protects people from government overreach.

The disparity between how courts interpret the Excessive Fines Clause has become a central issue in the case. In 2021, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that seizing a $40,000 vehicle over a low-level drug offense was unconstitutionally excessive, a standard that stands in sharp contrast to Alaska’s position that a $95,000 plane is fair game for a misdemeanor beer offense.

Jouppi served four years in the Air Force before building his career as a bush pilot, and the Cessna at the center of the case was the backbone of his air-taxi company, KenAir, which served remote Alaskan communities for years. The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling could set a precedent affecting how states across the country handle civil forfeiture in cases involving relatively minor offenses.