On Monday, the Supreme Court accepted a petition from Alaska involving an alleged six-pack of beer, an airplane, and the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause.
In Jouppi v. Alaska, the Justices will weigh in on a dispute going back to April 2012, when Alaska state police arrested pilot Ken Jouppi and his lone passenger on Jouppi’s local air-taxi transport plane. The plane was bound for the town of Beaver, which had banned the consumption of alcohol. The police spotted a six-pack of Budweiser on top of the passenger’s luggage and subsequently found three cases of beer.
Jouppi denied knowing the presence of the Budweiser in his airplane, while the police claimed the six pack was visible on top of the passenger’s luggage. Jouppi and his company were found guilty of knowingly transporting an alcoholic beverage into a dry community and were fined $3,000. Jouppi himself spent three days in jail.
Since then, the state of Alaska has tried to seize Jouppi’s Cessna aircraft under a forfeiture statute. The plane was valued at an estimated $95,000. Jouppi’s attorneys have claimed that the forfeiture violates the Eighth Amendment, which states that “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the state’s forfeiture claim.
The question presented to the Supreme Court is “whether, in determining whether a fine contravenes the Excessive Fines Clause, courts may consider the gravity of the underlying offense purely in the abstract or should consider the gravity of the specific defendant's wrongdoing.”
The Eighth Amendment’s recent history and incorporation
While the Eighth Amendment was part of the Bill of Rights ratified and added to the Constitution in December 1791, it took a very long time for parts of it to be applied at a statewide level. The original Bill of Rights only applied to the national government. However, following the ratification of the 14th Amendment and later rulings by the Supreme Court, the Court has applied nearly every provision of the Bill of Rights to abuses by the states. This process began to pick up steam in Gitlow v. New York (1925), where the Court affirmed that the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause extended First Amendment’s free speech protections to the states.
The most recent Bill of Rights provision incorporated by the Court is the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines clause. In Timbs v. Indiana (2019), a unanimous Supreme Court considered the case of a man, Tyson Timbs, who owned a Land Rover valued at $42,000. Timbs later used the vehicle in a series of drug transactions. The state of Indiana attempted to seize the Land Rover under a forfeiture statute. Timbs’s attorneys argued that the seizure was excessive, since the maximum fine for his charge was $10,000. While the lower court agreed with Timbs, the Indiana Supreme Court decided, in part, that the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause had never been incorporated at a state level and, therefore, did not apply in the case.
In her opinion in Timbs, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the traditions of the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and other original sources, as well as key evidence from the Founding, Reconstruction, and the twenty-first century, as proof that the Excessive Fines Clause is “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty.” Ginsburg and six other Justices cited the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause as incorporating the Excessive Fines clause at a state level. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch cited the 14th Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause. But the Court did not cite specifics on the test used to analyze the underlying substantive claim—namely, whether a given fine is excessive.
The arguments in the case
In its brief to the Supreme Court, Jouppi’s attorneys argued that any test that relates to the amount of a fine for a criminal offense is based on the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Bajakajian (1998). There, an airline passenger leaving the United States was found to have an unclaimed total of $357,144 in cash on his person, well above a limit of $10,000 that needed to be claimed. The federal government sought forfeiture of the entire amount. Writing for the majority in Bajakajian, Justice Thomas concluded that the amount of a fine “must bear some relationship to the gravity of the offense that it is designed to punish.”
In Jouppi, a trial court found that the forfeiture of the Cessna was unconstitutionally excessive under the Bajakajian precedent since Jouppi was only convicted of a class A misdemeanor. A state appeals court in Alaska vacated the trial court’s judgment, concluding that its investigation was incomplete. The Alaska Supreme Court then decided that the forfeiture was appropriate based on the amount of harm caused to the community by the illegal importation of alcohol. “It is clear to us that the legislature determined that the harm from even a six-pack of beer knowingly imported into a dry village is severe enough to warrant forfeiture of an aircraft,” it held. The Alaska Supreme Court also said that its decision did not conflict with the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fine Clause.
In its petition to the Supreme Court, the Institute for Justice, representing Jouppi, asked the Supreme Court to resolve several questions presented in the case. It specifically argued that the Alaska Supreme Court decision was an outlier, since it was based on an abstract view of the question and not the details of the case. The Alaska Supreme Court’s decision conflicted with the Supreme Court’s “precedent and the Excessive Fines Clause’s text and history,” it concluded.
After Jouppi’s petition of certiorari was filed, the state waived its right to respond. The Supreme Court then asked the state to file a response brief. The state said the Alaska Supreme Court decision was based on a clear mandate from state lawmakers. “Alaska faces unique difficulties in combating alcohol abuse and its consequences,” it said. “Given that many communities are accessible primarily by air, the legislature provided that any airplane used to illegally import alcohol into a dry community was subject to forfeiture.”
“The Alaska Supreme Court reached its conclusion by reviewing the specific facts of Jouppi’s case alongside the legislature’s objectives. That is how other courts have addressed similar claims, and that is what is required by United States v. Bajakajian.”
The Supreme Court considered the case at private conference on June 29, 2026, with its decision to take the case coming three weeks later. It is expected that the Court’s decision in its next term starting in October 2026 will become its latest action to refine its guidance on the Eighth Amendment.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
