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Last week, the state of Utah filed a lawsuit to seize control of more than 18 million acres of federally managed land in the state. The suit targets lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management that are not congressionally-designated national monuments, national conservation areas, or wilderness areas. The lawsuit bypasses lower courts in an effort to petition the U.S. Supreme Court directly, which will decide whether or not it will even take up the case (the next Supreme Court term starts on Oct. 7, 2024).
In the West, states like Utah were territories of federal land before they were admitted to the Union. When Utah became a state in 1894, the law admitting it to the Union limited how much land the state could control. The Enabling Act of 1894 states that Utah “shall not be entitled to any further or other grants of land for any purpose” than what was expressly given to them in the document.
“There’s pretty solid case law going back a very long time that says Congress has the authority over public lands,” said John Ruple, University of Utah law professor. “There was no state land until the federal government created a state,” Ruple said. “So when we hear people talk about Utah taking back land, it doesn't make a whole lot of historical sense, because Utah didn't own that land prior to federal acquisition.”
While Ruple and other legal experts are skeptical of the state’s long-shot bid to overturn management of federal lands, conservationists have issued warnings of the wide-reaching ambitions of the complaint, which could gut the BLM, seize territory currently used for recreational purposes, oil and gas leasing, and ranching, and potentially transform the West. Michael Carroll, BLM campaign director for The Wilderness Society, said the court system has “rejected legal and legislative efforts to seize public lands for decades,” and that he expects the “latest attempt by the state of Utah will have a similar result,” but also warned, “make no mistake, Utah’s wrong-headed lawsuit would have severe repercussions far beyond the state’s borders if it succeeded.”
Episode 200 goes behind the scenes at CWP
For the 200th episode of The Landscape, we brought the whole Center for Western Priorities team together to talk about what brought us each into conservation work, our favorite podcast episodes, and recount some of the most memorable moments we’ve had as public lands advocates.
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The Utah Constitution is also clear in 'forever disclaim[ing] all right and title to the unappropriated public lands.’ Utah’s claims would require the Supreme Court to reinterpret both of those constitutional provisions in ways that are not intuitive, upsetting 150 years of settled Supreme Court law and destabilizing land ownership throughout the West. That’s a big lift.”
