State, Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission v. Carlson

OPINION

FABE, Chief Justice.

I. INTRODUCTION

This is the third appeal arising out of a lawsuit centering on whether Alaska can charge nonresidents more for commercial fishing licenses than it charges resident commercial fishers. The case is brought as a class action by a group of nonresident commercial fishers. In previous rulings in this case, we held that different rates can be charged for resident and nonresident commercial fishers, and we derived a formula for calculating the acceptable difference. The components of this formula, including various budget expenditures and oil revenues, are in…