Blender Version
Broken: 2.8 b24232ff349

Short description of error
Example: in the spring svn, /media/data/spring/scenes/02-forest/02_025_A/02_025_A.lighting.bug.blend

In this file I am encountering a bizarre bug where when I duplicate one of the tree instances, they don't get linked to the view layer and because of that instead land in orphan data.

Just try to duplicate the tree instance in the viewport.