The Alaska Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling Thursday, declaring a ballot initiative to ban set nets in certain areas of the state unconstitutional.

Calling the initiative a “give-away program” that was designed to appeal to the self-interests of noncommercial fishermen, the court issued an opinion that put an end to a lengthy legal process that began in late 2013.

Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott certified the ballot initiative after the initiative’s sponsor, the Alaska Fisheries Conservation Alliance, submitted 43,000 signatures in support of the measure, 36,000 of which were declared valid by the Division of Elections.

The initiative would have almost exclusively impacted the Kenai Peninsula, where 735 set-net permits are registered alongside a large guided angler industry. Alaska residents hold more than 80 percent of the permits.

After the initiative was filed, then-Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell rejected it in January 2014 as an allocative measure, which is prohibited by the Alaska Constitution.

AFCA appealed and won a reversal in Superior Court that allowed the alliance to begin collecting signatures.

“I’m still shaking,” said Resources for All Alaskans President Jim Butler after the decision was issued. Resources for all Alaskans, or RFAA, is a relatively new group formed to combat the set-net ban. It weighed in on the argument in March 2014 supporting the state’s assertion that the initiative was a prohibited appropriation of state resources.

“I very much appreciate the court’s effort to very methodically and step-by-step analyze the constitutional issues as well as the vision of the framers of the Alaska Constitution to get to their decision,” Butler said.

The Alaska Fisheries Conservation Alliance released a statement saying its members were disappointed by the decision and referring to the signatures of the registered voters who signed to have the ban put on the ballot.

“We are disappointed with the court’s decision to deny voters an opportunity to weigh in on the method and means for harvesting,” said AFCA president Joe Connors in the written statement.

Founding member Bob Penney is also quoted in the statement, he said he is “deeply disappointed because the Kenai Kings are the real loser here and it now seems their species will continue to decline. Maybe it’s time the federal government looked into this issue.”

When reached by phone Saturday, Penney said he was on vacation and had no comment on the decision.

AFCA Executive Director Clark Penney, Bob Penney’s grandson, said the group is looking into the Endangered Species Act as another avenue to protect salmon caught by set nets.

Clark Penney said the group’s focus was not just on Kenai River king salmon, but on protecting fish species that are targeted by ineffective means.

“We see set nets as the least effective for taking their target fisheries,” Clark Penney said.

According to the court, commercial set-netters are a distinct user group who would be unfairly stripped of a public resource allocation — their part of the millions of salmon that return to Alaska each year — to another party’s benefit.

Most of the members of AFCA are sportfishermen who would ostensibly see more salmon in the river were the commercial nets to be removed from the water. Two board members, Joe Connors and Derek Leichliter, are former set net fishermen.

The court wrote in the Thursday ruling that the initiative, were it to pass, would essentially devote salmon to a specific user group on the Kenai Peninsula, to the exclusion of another.

“We concluded that the initiative in question was a give-away program because it was ‘designed to appeal to the self-interests of sport, personal, and subsistence fishers, in that those groups were specifically targeted to receive state assets in the circumstance of harvestable shortages,” the court wrote.

The court also concluded that the ballot initiative would have narrowed the Legislature’s and Board of Fisheries’ ability to make allocations.

“If (the initiative) were enacted, then neither the Legislature or the Board would be able to allocate any salmon stock to this significant, existing user group,” the court wrote.