Blue Ribbon RELEASE: Tenth Circuit Opens the Courthouse Doors: BlueRibbon Coalition and State of Utah Win Right to Challenge Antiquities Act Overreach

[Blue Ribbon Coalition]

Federal appeals court reverses dismissal, sends Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monument challenge back for review on the merits​

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit today handed the BlueRibbon Coalition and the State of Utah a significant victory, ruling that federal courts can and must review whether a President exceeded the limits Congress placed on his power under the Antiquities Act.

The court vacated the district court's dismissal of the challenge to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument expansions and sent the case back to the district court to decide whether President Biden's proclamations — which set aside 3.23 million acres, an area twice the size of Delaware — exceeded the statute's requirements that monuments protect actual "objects of historic or scientific interest" and be "confined to the smallest area compatible" with protecting them.

For more than a century, no court had ever reached the question of whether a monument designation broke the law, because the government argued the President's discretion was effectively unreviewable. Today's decision rejects that view. As the court put it, the Antiquities Act "places discernible limits" on the President, and courts "undermine rather than honor congressional intent by refusing to enforce" them. The court warned that the government's position would let a President reserve 63% of an entire state to protect a single miner's cabin — a result it called "unreasonable, perhaps even absurd."

Opponents to this challenge have rushed to declare victory, but their position misstates what happened. This decision did not uphold the monument expansions. The court expressly declined to decide the merits, vacated the lower court's ruling, and ordered the district court to interpret the Antiquities Act's limits "in the first instance."

"The fight over whether these designations are lawful is now beginning in earnest, on terms far more favorable to our position than before," said Ben Burr, Executive Director of the BlueRibbon Coalition. "Today the court confirmed what we have argued all along: the Antiquities Act means what it says, and 'smallest area compatible' is a real limit, not a suggestion. This is a turning point, but it is not the finish line. We are committed to seeing this through to a final judgment that defines the clear limits of the Antiquities Act."

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