Nearly 15 years ago, Alaska bush pilot Ken Jouppi lost his $95,000 airplane when law enforcement officers spotted a six-pack of beer on board.
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to take up Jouppi’s case to determine whether confiscation of his plane was excessive punishment.
For decades, Jouppi flew his Cessna across the Alaskan wilderness, shuttling locals and tourists who depend on bush pilots.
In 2012, things unraveled when Alaska State Troopers found a pack of Budweiser tucked in a passenger’s luggage. Both Jouppi and the passenger were charged with misdemeanors, fined $1,500 and sentenced to three days in jail.
That wasn’t all, however, and for the past 14 years, the state has fought to take Jouppi’s plane as additional punishment for a passenger’s beer.
Now in his 80s, Jouppi is still fighting for his plane, and the highest court in the nation has agreed to decide whether the state’s actions amounted to an unconstitutionally excessive fine.
“The Excessive Fines Clause of the Constitution was built for cases like this,” said Sam Gedge, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice (IJ), which represents Jouppi. “As government agencies increasingly exploit fines and forfeitures to pad their budgets, it’s vital that the Supreme Court make clear that the Excessive Fines Clause is a meaningful check on government overreach. We’re confident that it will do so here.”
According to a notice from IJ, the saga started as a “normal day,” on April 3, 2012, when Jouppi was preparing to ferry a passenger and her groceries from Fairbanks to the village of Beaver, which had voted in 2004 to ban alcohol outright.
Hidden in the passenger’s luggage were three cases of beer, two Budweiser and one Bud Light, meant as a gift for her husband, the local postmaster. State troopers found them before Jouppi took flight, claiming one six-pack was in plain view. That was enough, they said, to make Jouppi complicit.
In addition to charging Ken with a misdemeanor offense, the state also sought to seize and keep his plane. After 13 years, in April 2025, the Alaska Supreme Court rejected Jouppi’s argument that forfeiting his airplane violated the Excessive Fines Clause.
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“[T]he illegal importation of even a six-pack of beer causes grave societal harm,” the court reasoned, so forfeiting Jouppi’s airplane “does not violate the Excessive Fines Clause.”
The U.S. Supreme Court will now have the final say.
“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. “I’m in my 80s now, and I’ve been fighting this for over a decade because I see it as my duty to ensure that the Bill of Rights actually means something in protecting against government overreach.”
The Institute for Justice (IJ) is a public-interest law firm that litigates nationwide to vindicate individual liberties and the right to be free from excessive fines in particular.
