A divided federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit filed by the state of Utah and Garfield and Kane counties, challenging President Biden's decision to expand Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court judge's ruling that threw out Utah's lawsuit challenging the President's powers under the Antiquities Act. But the appeals court also rejected some of the plaintiffs.
Essentially, the 10th Circuit Court ruled that a lower court judge applied an incorrect standard and that courts can consider challenges to the President's decisions on national monuments.
"We conclude that the district court erred in dismissing Plaintiffs’ claims. The district court based its determinations on a flawed view of sovereign immunity’s ultra vires exception, and we must correct those errors," Judge Joel Carson wrote in the majority opinion.
Bears Ears National Monument has been a political football since it was created by President Obama in 2016. President Trump, in his first term, shrunk the monument in 2017 and President Biden restored the boundaries and expanded it somewhat in 2021. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was created by President Clinton in 1996, had its boundaries shunk by President Trump in 2017 and then restored by President Biden in 2021.
"I agree with the majority that the district court’s dismissal order was wrong to afford total immunity and absolute deference to the executive. However, I also conclude that the majority’s opinion and remand swings too far in the opposite direction," Judge Richard Federico wrote in his dissent.
The Utah Attorney General's Office called the ruling "a win for Utah and for every Western state that has watched federal administrations treat the Antiquities Act like a blank check to lock up millions of acres."
"For years, the federal government has insisted that a president’s monument proclamation is unlimited and can’t be reviewed. That once a president acts, the courthouse door closes. The 10th Circuit has rejected that argument, and agreed with our argument that federal courts do have the authority—and even the responsibility—to check these designations against the limits Congress deliberately wrote into the statute over 120 years ago," Attorney General Derek Brown's office said in a statement to FOX 13 News.
"This is the fight Utah has waited for years to have."
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which intervened in the case alongside environmental and tribal groups, seemed OK with the ruling on Tuesday.
"Today’s decision confirms a key point: that the lower court previously got wrong: federal courts can hear challenges to a president’s use of the Antiquities Act to establish or diminish a national monument," SUWA legal director Steve Bloch said in a statement. "We are confident that President Biden’s restoration of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments – which this appeal sought to undermine – was within his powers under the Antiquities Act. His executive orders establishing the monuments protected irreplaceable cultural, biological and geological resources found nowhere else in the world. For over 100 years, no court has ever overturned a President’s use of this authority, and we fully expect President Biden’s actions will be upheld and these National Monuments will remain protected."
Read the 10th Circuit Court ruling here:
