Beer found on the airplane included a six-pack, which the trooper believed the pilot saw, and another 66 cans of beer hidden in the passenger’s luggage. 

“NATA is not asking the court to overturn the pilot’s conviction,” it said. “The association’s position is that pilots should be held responsible for what they knowingly transport but should not be treated as law enforcement officers responsible for searching every passenger’s bags. The case could help clarify that a pilot’s primary responsibility is to operate the aircraft safely, not conduct broad searches for items prohibited at a passenger’s destination.”

Essentially, NATA argues that charter pilots have plenty of responsibilities related to FAA regulations to ensure safety of flight. “Those rules regulated passenger baggage for purposes of safe loading and carriage, but they did not impose a general duty to open and search passengers’ private luggage for alcohol prohibited by state or local law,” the brief explained.

NATA isn’t disputing the state’s authority to prohibit alcohol delivery to “dry” villages that opt to remain alcohol-free. “A constitutional inquiry into the gravity of a particular pilot’s wrongdoing should reflect the duties the pilot actually had and the work he was actually performing, rather than rest upon an abstract conception of a charter pilot as a general-purpose law-enforcement inspector.”

The actual work of a charter pilot, especially a small operator in Alaska responsible for every aspect of the operation, should align with the applicable FAA regulations, according to NATA. This includes ensuring baggage is properly secured and within limits. “Those are substantial responsibilities,” NATA wrote in the brief. “But they are aviation-safety responsibilities. The rule did not create a general obligation to open a passenger’s private luggage and search it for alcohol prohibited by the law of the passenger’s destination.”

According to the brief, “A theory advanced in the proceedings…treated the visible six-pack as a reason Jouppi should have suspected additional alcohol and investigated the passenger’s remaining belongings. The Alaska Supreme Court did not adopt that theory; it instead assumed culpability only for the six-pack and directed forfeiture of the aircraft on that basis. But the theory illustrates why the aviation context matters: a fact relevant to criminal knowledge should not silently become an undefined professional duty to conduct a comprehensive contraband search. Federal aviation law does not assign that general law-enforcement function to the Part 135 pilot.

“For NATA members, the distinction is important. On-demand operators transport passengers to thousands of destinations under a complex overlay of federal, state, and local law. Pilots must comply with laws that actually govern their operations and may not knowingly participate in unlawful transportation. But an excessiveness analysis should not enlarge a pilot’s culpability by treating the absence of a comprehensive baggage search as though such a search were part of the pilot’s ordinary professional role.”

NATA is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the Alaska judgment and “make clear that the gravity of Jouppi’s offense must be assessed with reference to his own conduct in its actual operational setting as a single pilot preparing to fly passengers to the remote Alaskan bush.”

The Institute for Free Speech has also filed an amicus brief, this one focusing on the constitutional prohibition of excessive fines.