SCOTUS declines to weigh in on 10th Circuit's "corner-crossing" case

The checkerboard pattern of land ownership in the American West has long posed a tricky legal question: when federally-owned parcels abut diagonally through private land, can someone move from one public parcel to the next without stepping on private property and still be lawfully using public land? That scenario, which is commonly called “corner-crossing”, is at the heart of a recent case with wide implications.

In the case known as Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape the facts are straightforward. Four hunters from Missouri used a ladder to climb from one tract of public land to another at a shared corner in Wyoming in 2021, without setting foot on the private land that intervenes. The private-landowner, via his company, alleged trespass and sued civilly after criminal charges had resulted in acquittal. The ownership pattern stems from 19th-century land grants: Congress, between about 1850 and 1870, issued alternating sections of land to railroads and reserved alternating sections for the federal government, resulting in so-called checkerboard parcels. Many of the public parcels became landlocked and accessible only at corner points. The hunters’ access raised the question whether federal law overrides a private landowner’s state-law right to exclude.

On March 18, 2025 the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the federal statute known as the Unlawful Inclosures Act of 1885 (UIA) prohibits a landowner from effectively enclosing public land and thereby blocks state-law trespass claims in this context. The court found that corner-crossing without touching the private surface did not constitute unlawful trespass under state law because the federal statute preempted the exclusion right in that checkerboard-land setting. The decision covers the six states in the Circuit (Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Wyoming).

In July 2025 the landowner filed a petition for a writ of certiorari asking the Supreme Court of the United States to review the case. That petition raised the question whether the UIA implicitly preempts private landowners’ state-law rights to exclude in an area covering millions of acres of checkerboarded lands in the West. Then in October the Court declined to grant certiorari. With no further review, the Tenth Circuit decision remains the controlling precedent in those six states.

So what does that mean? Practically speaking, in the six states under the Tenth Circuit the ruling affirms that one may cross from one public parcel to another at a shared corner, so long as one does not physically touch the private parcel’s surface (and subject to the specifics of how the corner-crossing is done). In other states the question remains unsettled. And although the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal leaves the Tenth Circuit rule intact, it does not foreclose future petitions or legislative changes.

For landowners whose holdings lie amid checkerboards of public land this may affect the scope of access and how exclusion is practiced. For recreational users of public lands (hunters, hikers, anglers, etc.) the decision opens access in certain states where otherwise parcels might have been inaccessible.

The case is fascinating, especially for us land use nerds, and illustrates the complex interplay of federal statutes, state trespass and property law, and historical land-grant patterns.