Add another L to Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s win-loss record in the courts.
The governor, who has taken on many losing legal positions during his two terms in office, was handed another loss on Friday when Superior Court Judge Marianna Carpeneti ruled his attempt to establish a Department of Agriculture violated the Alaska Constitution’s rules for executive orders. The governor has already announced plans to appeal the decision to the Alaska Supreme Court.
The decision is the latest in the governor’s dogged attempts to establish a standalone Department of Agriculture – creating a handful of new executive jobs for him to fill – unilaterally. Currently, the Division of Agriculture is housed within the Department of Natural Resources. His arguments for the change have been vague and shifting, and some supporters have admitted it’s little more than feel-good messaging.
While legislators have generally supported the idea, citing food security, a majority have opposed his approach of using an executive order, which legislators can only approve or deny. They argue that creating the department through a bill, which would give lawmakers an opportunity to review and amend the proposal, is a wiser and more effective approach.
During the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers successfully voted down the creation of the Department of Agriculture, but Dunleavy tried to revive the idea by filing a second, largely similar executive order during the August special session (which was mostly about education funding).
Lawmakers refused even to bring his second executive order to a vote, arguing that it violated state law governing executive orders. Many saw it as the governor’s way to try to slip the issue through when the Legislature was potentially shorthanded.
In the lawsuit filed last fall, lawmakers argued that governors are allowed to issue such orders reorganizing the state departments only during regular sessions that run from January to April, and that the move violated the separation of powers.
In a ruling that delves into the records of Alaska’s Constitutional Convention and semantics, Carpeneti agreed with lawmakers.
The question, Carpeneti wrote in her order, comes down to what the framers meant in Article III, Section 23 of the Constitution, where it says, “The legislature shall have sixty days of a regular session, or a full session if of shorter duration, to disapprove these executive orders.”
Does “a full session of shorter duration” apply to any legislative session, including shorter, more subject-limited special sessions? The governor argued it should.
Judge Carpeneti disagreed, pointing to the drafting history that showed the framers wanted to give legislators the opportunity to properly vet and review the governor’s attempts to reorganize the government through executive order. She said, looking at that, there’s no support for the governor’s claim that the constitution is all-inclusive.
“The governor does not explain why constitutional provisions defining two types of sessions necessarily mean that if a section does not specify one, it must mean both,” Judge Carpeneti wrote. “And his argument requires the court to disregard the drafting history, which clearly indicates that the framers intended that the work of disproving an EO be done only during a regular session. The fact that the framers did not specifically disapprove of special sessions in section 23 does not require the court to read their inclusion into the section, where the drafting history points clearly to a different conclusion.”
There are also several pages of the order that delve into the semantics and wording of the Alaska Constitution. Again, Carpeneti found Dunleavy’s arguments unconvincing, summing up the findings under a section header titled, “Rules of grammar and interpretive canons do not sway the court’s conclusion because they are minimally relevant and helpful to the court’s analysis.”
In prepared statements, House Speaker Bryce Edgmon called the ruling a win for the state’s separation of powers. Juneau Rep. Sara Hannan, the chair of the Legislative Council that spearheaded the lawsuit, said it’s wise to bar any governor from making such hasty changes to how the government is organized.
“Allowing the governor to be successful would have set a terrible precedent,” she said.
Lawmakers are set to return to Juneau for the 2026 legislative session on Jan. 20.
The ruling
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
