Mineta

At midnight on March 23, 1989, the T/V Exxon Valdez ran aground onto Bligh Reef in Alaska, spilling nearly eleven million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound (the “Sound”). The following year, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, increasing the penalties for oil pollution and instituting a regulatory regime aimed at improving oil tanker safety, preventing future oil spills, and enhancing oil spill response. See 33 U.S.C. §§ 2701-61 . Section 5007 of the Oil Pollution Act (the “Act”) (codified at 33 U.S.C. § 2737 ) excludes from the waters of Prince William Sound any vessel that spilled more than one million gallons of oil into the marine environment after March 22, 1989. The Act effectively bars the Exxon Valdez from operating in Prince William Sound.

SeaRiver Maritime Financial Holdings, Inc. and SeaRiver Maritime International, the owners of the Exxon Valdez, and SeaRiver Maritime, Inc., its operator, (collectively, “SeaRiver”) brought this action seeking, inter alia, a declaration that, as applied to SeaRiver, § 2737 is an unconstitutional bill of attainder and denies SeaRi-ver due process and equal protection in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The…