A Utah conservation group has sued the governor and attorney general over the state’s U.S. Supreme Court public lands lawsuit.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, in a lawsuit filed in 3rd District Court Wednesday, argues that Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Attorney General Sean Reyes violated Utah’s state constitution by taking their challenge of federal lands to the nation’s high court.
The group wants to stop the state from “dismantling a core part of Utah’s identity: public lands,” said Steve Bloch, SUWA’s legal director, in a statement.
“Utahns love their public lands,” Bloch said in a news conference Wednesday morning. “They’re not about to simply see them sold off or given up without a fight.”
Utah in August challenged the Bureau of Land Management’s ownership of 18.5 million acres of land “unappropriated” to parks, monuments or other national sites in the state in the nation’s highest court, arguing that ownership violates the U.S. Constitution.
The land includes “iconic” landscapes like Fisher Towers outside of Moab, Nine Mile Canyon and Labyrinth Canyon, Bloch said.
The state’s lawsuit, if successful, would likely lead to public lands being “disposed” or sold “to the highest bidder,” SUWA claims in its suit.
And it would set a precedent that could implicate more than the 18.5 million acres in question, Bloch said.
“Let’s make no mistake that really, the 200 million acres of Western federal public lands are at risk,” he added.
The conservation group is asking the state court to bar Utah from pursuing its Supreme Court case and questioning the constitutionality of “unappropriated” public lands in any court.
SUWA’s argument hinges on part of Utah’s constitution, which reads that in exchange for becoming part of the United States, Utah “forever disclaim[ed] all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within” it.
“When Utah first entered the union in 1896, the citizens of this state forever disclaimed their right to federal lands in Utah,“ Bloch said. ”That was that was a part of the bargain of statehood, and our case filed this morning seeks to enforce that commitment.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) A billboard along Interstate 80 for the state's "Stand for our Land" campaign against the Bureau of Land Management to regain control of public lands in Utah, is pictured on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024.
“In direct violation of this constitutional mandate,” SUWA’s court filing reads, “Defendants are spending millions of dollars of state monies and dedicating enormous other resources to pursuing litigation in an attempt to assert right and title to unappropriated public lands lying within Utah’s boundaries.”
Cox and Reyes did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether or not it will hear Utah’s public lands case.
The Biden administration said the state’s argument “plainly lacks merit,” and the Ute Indian Tribe called the state’s filing “an existential threat” to the tribe itself and its reservation in northeastern Utah.
Christine Durham, Deno Himonas and Jess Krannich at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Fred Voros and Troy Booher at the law firm Zimmerman & Booher are representing SUWA.
