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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah has filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the federal government's claim to roughly 18.5 million acres of "unappropriated" land and calling for its "disposal" into state hands.
"Utah is absolutely committed to keeping public lands in public hands and locally controlled," said Gov. Spencer Cox during a news conference Tuesday with Attorney General Sean Reyes at the state Capitol in Salt Lake City.
"Utah deserves priority when it comes to managing its land. Utah is in the best position to understand and respond to unique needs of our environment and communities," Cox said.
The land in question, currently administered by the Bureau of Land Management, represents around 34% of the state's geographical territory. This lawsuit does not challenge federal land that has been expressly designated for a specific purpose, including national parks, monuments, forests, military installations, Indigenous land and federal buildings, among others.
Reyes told a room full of reporters and legislators that the question at hand was "whether the federal government can simply hold unappropriated lands within a state indefinitely over the objection of that state."
"It's a simple question. It's an elegant one, and we're hoping the Supreme Court will give us an answer," Reyes said.
The complaint states, "Nothing in the Constitution authorizes the United States to hold vast unreserved swathes of Utah's territory in perpetuity, over Utah's express objection, without even so much as a pretense of using those lands in the service of any enumerated power."
They argued that the state of Utah cannot properly mitigate fire danger, perform animal control activities, or exercise eminent domain for infrastructure, transportation and telecommunications with so much land held by federal agencies.
Additionally, the state faces a loss of property tax, the complaint says, while the federal government's massive revenue gains from "mineral development" is "second only to that provided by the Internal Revenue Service."
"Utah cannot manage, police or care for more than two-thirds of its own territory because it's controlled by people who don't live in Utah," Reyes said, "who aren't elected by Utah citizens and not responsive to our local needs."
"The primary caregiver should be the state of Utah supported by the federal government, not the other way around," said Utah Senate President Stuart Adams.
Utah House Majority Leader Mike Schultz was also in attendance and said, "Even if you believe the Washington bureaucrats should manage the land 2,000 miles away, we simply have to admit they have not done a very good job."
"Over 500 miles of roads have recently been closed in Utah on our public lands," Schultz said. "They are in the process of closing down thousands and thousands of miles more."
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Utah, an informational website created to support the lawsuit states that Utah will "balance recreation, wildlife habitat, and conservation with other responsible uses such as energy production, livestock grazing, and sustainable resource development." All existing rights on public lands, like grazing, mining, energy development and recreation would be recognized, the website says.
"This is the right time to bring this lawsuit and determine once and for all — does the Constitution say what we think it says, or does it not?" said Cox.
Reyes told reporters they have retained Paul Clement, former solicitor general of the United States, and Washington, D.C., lawyer Erin Murphy, "some of the preeminent Supreme Court advocates of our day," to assist in the suit.
The governor's office also released a series of commercials and video statements from elected officials to accompany this lawsuit, as part of a "Stand for Our Land" press campaign.
Critics of the effort respond
Critics of the action were quick to release their own statements against transferring the land into state hands.
Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, said in a statement that "130 years ago, the people of Utah agreed to 'forever disclaim all right and title' to national public lands when Utah became a state. ... The property clause of the Constitution gives Congress, and only Congress, authority to transfer or dispose of federal lands. That's the beginning, middle, and end of this lawsuit."
"Gov. Cox and the state Legislature need to make a U-turn before they waste millions of taxpayer dollars enriching out-of-state lawyers on this pointless lawsuit," Weiss said.
A spokesperson for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called the announcement an "election-year stunt," while the legal director of the same organization, Steve Bloch, said in a prepared statement that the "stunning red-rock canyons, spires, and mesas" are put at risk by "Utah's saber rattling and insistence that many of these remarkable landscapes are instead 'state lands' that should be developed and ultimately destroyed by short-sighted state politicians."
Cox told those at the Capitol, "If you actually want to manage this land in a way that is better for the environment and better for all of us, then you should be supportive of what we are trying to accomplish here."
The state office for the Bureau of Land Management did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
