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BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court announced today that it will not hear Utah’s land grab lawsuit, which seeks control of federal public lands in the state.
Protestors gathered on the steps of the Utah state capitol on Saturday to rally against Utah's land grab lawsuit. In August 2024, Utah Governor Spencer Cox and then-Attorney General Sean Reyes filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s authority to manage 18.5 million acres of federal public land within the state of Utah. The state has paid over $500,000 to a law firm championing the attack on federal control over public lands and has budgeted twice as much on a media campaign to influence public opinion.
The protest lasted for two hours, and included speeches by Utah Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, poet and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams, Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Louise Fernandez, the rally’s first speaker and an environmental biology student at Salt Lake Community College. “For far too long, these lands, our lands, have been under constant threat. Time and time again, those in power have sought to strip these lands of their beauty, essence and life,” said Fernandez. “The urgency has never been greater and the need for action has never been more pressing.”
Utah’s media campaign includes billboards, print, TV and radio ads, and a website advocating for the state’s position in the lawsuit. The PR campaign, along with attorney fees, has cost taxpayers over $1 million. “Those lawsuits are spending hundreds of millions of dollars of our state budget that could go to education, food security, health care,” Senate Minority Leader Escamilla said.
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These are climate change fires. The scientific literature on this is unambiguous.”
