The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday stopped Utah’s long-shot public lands lawsuit in its tracks. It's the latest rejection in a decades-old fight to turn control of federally managed lands over to states.
Public lands advocates quickly celebrated. They worried that allowing Utah’s case to move forward would threaten to upend the management of 200 million acres of public lands across the West, potentially giving way to the sale of public lands to private entities.
“We’re grateful the Supreme Court swiftly rejected the State of Utah’s misguided land grab lawsuit. For more than 100 years, the Supreme Court has affirmed the power of the federal government to hold and manage public lands on behalf of all Americans,” said Steve Bloch, the legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
The organization filed its own lawsuit against state leaders in district court, arguing Utah’s claims violate the state constitution.
After skipping lower courts to lodge this special petition with the Supreme Court, Utah could now file its case with a district court, but a spokesperson for the state’s attorney’s general office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Utah specifically took aim at 18.5 million acres of public lands – about a third of the state – that are managed by the Bureau of Land Management and are not designated as wilderness, parks or monuments. It argued that it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to hold onto those “unappropriated” lands indefinitely.
“This egregious federal overreach cannot continue,” the state wrote in its initial filing, arguing that the government should begin the process to “dispose” of the lands.
Several other states, counties and lawmakers backed Utah, including the states of Wyoming, Idaho and Alaska, the Arizona legislature, a handful of counties in New Mexico and U.S. Senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney from Utah.
In response, the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice said the state’s petition “plainly lacks merit,” and that Utah gave up the rights to the federal lands within its boundaries when it joined the union in 1896. The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation also joined in opposing Utah’s case.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
