An Oregon man accused of violating Yellowstone National Park’s fishing restrictions and a road closure is challenging the park’s rules as unenforceable under the U.S. Constitution.
Tate Pulliam filed a motion to dismiss his citations Monday in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming, asking the park’s Magistrate Judge Stephanie Hambrick to dismiss three citations he faces as government overreach.
A win by Pulliam on that argument could upend Yellowstone National Park’s ability to enforce rules not specifically contoured by Congress.
Pulliam’s advocacy team, Pacific Legal Foundation, hinges its argument on the U.S. Constitution’s language about how the federal government can appoint officials, as well as on language limiting lawmaking power to Congress.
“Tate went to Yellowstone to enjoy public land and left facing criminal charges,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Michael Poon in a Monday statement. “But Congress never made his alleged actions illegal.
"Instead, a park superintendent invented the rules behind these charges, resulting in massive overcriminialization. That is not how lawmaking works under the Constitution.”
Pulliam was cited in December on claims he was fishing in a river that was closed to fisherman for the winter, fishing without the proper permit, and that he drove his truck over a road then open only to over-snow vehicles.
The statement says Pulliam faces up to 18 months in prison.
However, the prosecutor’s office may file a response to Pulliam’s arguments in court.
Pulliam’s next hearing is set for May 12 in the Yellowstone Justice Center.
“Pulliam is fighting back against charges that never should have been filed,” says Pacific Legal Foundation’s statement. “The Constitution requires Congress to decide what conduct is criminal, including in national parks, but Congress improperly handed that sweeping power over to the Executive Branch.”
Darin Smith, U.S. Attorney for Wyoming, told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that his office is preparing a response to Pulliam’s motion.
The government disagrees with Pulliam’s arguments for dismissal and believes Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly acted within his proper authority, he said.
The Prequel
Hambrick rejected some arguments matching Pulliam’s last year, however, in the case of trail runner Michelino Sunseri.
Sunseri on Sept. 2, 2024, set a new Grand Teton trail running speed record, ascending and descending the mountain in 2 hours, 50 minutes and 10 seconds. Days later, Wyoming-based federal prosecutors charged him with a crime for running on a “restricted” social trail.
Hambrick convicted Sunseri after a May 2025 bench trial. A bench trial is one in which the judge delivers the verdict rather than a jury.
Like Pulliam, Sunseri had brought in the Pacific Legal Foundation.
He challenged Hambrick’s decision on grounds roughly matching those Pulliam now asserts: that the Grand Teton National Park superintendent exercises significant authority despite not having been appointed according to the Constitution’s methods for appointing officers; and that Congress hadn’t made laws adequately underpinning the park’s rules and criminal penalties for breaking them.
Pulliam also asserts that the federal government hinged its fishing restrictions on the wrong law.
In Sunseri’s case, Hambrick was not convinced.
She concluded the Grand Teton National Park superintendent is a federal employee, not a federal officer subject to the Constitution’s specific appointment procedures.
She also pointed to earlier court findings that the National Park Service’s authority to craft rules is “necessary and proper to effect Congress’s stated goal of preserving and managing national parks.”
Sunseri’s case didn’t find vindication or resolution in the appeals process, and President Donald Trump pardoned Sunseri last November.
Hambrick, the same magistrate, is now presiding over Pulliam’s case.
And, James Madison
Pulliam’s argument for the court to dismiss his criminal citations says Hambrick should abandon her earlier legal findings from Sunseri’s case as she adjudicates Pulliam’s.
The filing touches on both the Declaration of Independence and the James Madison’s “The Report of 1800.”
The U.S. Constitution’s instructions for appointing federal officers are important, Pulliam notes.
Those instructions say the president appoints federal officers with the Senate’s consent and advice. Congress can establish posts for inferior officers and leave their appointment in the control of “the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”
Pulliam’s filing asserts that the Yellowstone National Park superintendent has “clearly significant” authority and should be subject to that appointments process, but that his appointment didn’t follow the process for either a principal or inferior officer under the Constitution.
“Leading up to the Founding, one of the great causes of arbitrary governance was the English monarch’s uncontrolled appointment of officers who then wielded tremendous power against the people,” the motion says. “The problem was so great that it was listed among the grievances of the Declaration of Independence (which says the king) … ‘has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.’”
Pulliam emphasized this point by noting that the park imposes criminal penalties for various offenses the superintendent lists in a compendium of rules.
His motion challenges whether Congress has given specific enough language for the rules the park enforces.
“Criminal punishment is one of the most severe exercises of government power, and allowing executive officials to determine which conduct constitutes a crime concentrates legislative and prosecutorial authority in the same branch — precisely the danger the separation of powers was designed to prevent,” says the filing.
Madison wrote in "The Report of 1800" that Congress should “leave as little as possible to the discretion of those who are to apply and to execute the law,” the filing adds.
Hambrick, countering these arguments before they existed via one of her orders last year in the Sunseri case, wrote that the relevant case law doesn’t support the idea that Congress has unconstitutionally passed down its lawmaking authority through a bureaucracy and onto park authorities.
An 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from 2004 found that a national park could enforce rules as a necessary and proper function of federal government.
“The Defendant has provided no case to the contrary,” wrote Hambrick, in Sunseri’s case.
Pulliam’s case is ongoing.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
