The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in favor of Montana property owners who claim the U.S. Forest Service cheated them by unilaterally changing the terms of a decades-old public access agreement affecting their private land.
The March 28 decision split the court’s six-member conservative wing. Three members sided with the property owners; the other three sided with the federal government.
The decision reverses a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which threw out the property owners’ claims on technical grounds without considering the merits of the case. The new ruling allows the property owners to get their day in court to attempt to prove that the Forest Service illegally encroached on their land….