- Nantucket
- Long Island
- Puerto Rico
- Martha’s Vineyard
The correct Answer is Long Island
According to a 1985 Supreme Court case, which of these places is not an island?
Despite the fact that Long Island is surrounded by water on all sides, the United States Supreme Court unanimously decided in 1985 that Long Island is a peninsula, not an island. The case in question, United States v. Maine, developed from disputes between states and the federal government over who has legal authority over the water between the eastern tip of Long Island and Block Island Sound. If Long Island was an island, it was argued, then the federal government would control the waterways. If it was a peninsula, the rights would belong to the states. In the end, the court ruled in favor of the states, declaring that Long Island is an extension of the New York mainland, and thus not a natural island.
According to a 1985 Supreme Court case, which of these places is not an island?
In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 9-0 that, legally, Long Island is not an island. It is part of mainland New York State.
The ruling came as part of a decision in a case in which the federal government and the states of New York and Rhode Island had been fighting for control of Long Island Sound and Block Island Sound. While the states won the case, Long Island lost its island-ness, according to an April 30, 1985, Newsday article.
“Both the proximity of Long Island to the mainland, the shallowness and inutility of the intervening waters as they were constituted originally, and the fact that the East River is not an opening to the sea, suggest that Long Island be treated as an extension of mainland,” Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the court decision. Blackmun died in 1999.