Utah Files Lawsuit To Reclaim State Control Over Public Lands

Utah filed a lawsuit aimed at reclaiming authority over public lands within the state that remain under the jurisdiction of federal bureaucrats who have no plans to turn them over for local oversight.

On Tuesday, state officials announced their request for the Supreme Court to review the federal government’s authority to hold unappropriated lands indefinitely, a practice that has frustrated western communities in areas hamstrung from development by burdensome restrictions.

“It is not a secret that we live in the most beautiful state in the nation,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said. “But, when the federal government controls two-thirds of Utah, we are extremely limited in what we can do to actively manage and protect our natural resources.”

More than 60 percent of Utah remains under federal authority, with President Joe Biden claiming more through the controversial expansion of two major national monuments early in the administration. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under Biden has also established a framework to approve third-party leases of federal property for “conservation.”

Tuesday’s legal effort underscores a decades-long tension between western states and the federal government, as they wrestle over control of vast land areas. For years, locals have sought permission to utilize the land for harvesting timber, oil, and gas, grazing animals, and pursuing other opportunities, but Washington bureaucrats have blocked their efforts. The lawsuit filed by Utah raises issue with “unappropriated” land held by the Bureau of Land Management, noting that 34 percent of “total state territory” is unappropriated land under federal control.

In contrast to appropriated lands such as national parks, monuments, and forests, land that is “unappropriated” describes property the government is simply holding without any designated use.

“Nothing in the text of the Constitution authorizes such an inequitable practice,” said Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes. “In fact, the Framers of the Constitution carefully limited federal power to hold land within states. Current federal land policy violates state sovereignty and offends the original and most fundamental notions of federalism.”

While unappropriated lands are supposed to be made available under the Bureau of Land Management’s “multiple use mandate,” Gov. Cox complained the agency “has increasingly failed to keep these lands accessible and appears to be pursuing a course of active closure and restriction.”

“It is time for all Utahns to stand for our land,” he said.

The state’s lawsuit wants to claim control over roughly 29,000 square miles of public property, a region nearly as large as South Carolina or Maine. Republicans on Capitol Hill are now trying to open up federally managed lands to build new homes amid a nationwide housing shortage, but are facing headwinds from the Biden administration demanding a narrower scope of available property opened for construction.

Lawmakers are meanwhile bracing for the lame-duck president to claim millions more acres of public lands under even stricter protections through the Antiquities Act, the same law used to rope off areas of southern Utah surrounding Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments from any chance of development.

The 1906 Antiquities Act was first used by President Theodore Roosevelt to designate 1,300 acres surrounding Devil’s Tower in Wyoming as a protected national monument. The law has since been exploited by Democrats to create quasi-national parks with land restrictions far beyond the “the smallest area compatible” with protecting “specific natural, cultural or historic” relics as mandated under congressional statute. Earlier this year, President Biden expanded two national monuments in California by more than 120,000 acres, an area larger than the state’s Lassen Volcanic National Park.

The Antiquities Act is now the target of House Republicans eager to reform the 1906 law before future administrations leverage the Oval Office for aggressive land grabs. Western Caucus Vice Chair Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, told The Federalist in July, however, that new monument protections “do tend to happen at the end of Democrat administrations.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.