Utah is no longer asking the U.S. Supreme Court to order the United States to “dispose” of 18.5 million acres of public land in the Beehive State, its latest court pleading shows.

In an 18-page Dec. 4 filing, Utah says its original complaint does not seek a sell-off or ownership transfer of the federal property. That complaint to the Supreme Court in August asked justices to “[o]rder the United States to begin the process of disposing of its unappropriated federal lands within Utah” — 18.5 million acres of land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.

Utah filed more papers Dec. 4 that appear to back off from that demand for divesture.

“Utah is not ‘ask[ing] this Court to exercise … the power to dispose of public lands,’” Utah’s latest filing states. “Nor does Utah seek an order ‘direct[ing] Congress to enact new statutes,’” requiring the United States to shed its holdings, Utah’s latest document reads.

Instead, Utah’s lawyers contend, the state only wants the justices to declare unconstitutional the United States’ ownership of the property managed by the BLM. What the federal government should do after that, Utah’s latest filing doesn’t say.

The difference between the two filings marks a “seismic change” in Utah’s position, said Ryan Semerad, a Casper attorney practiced in public land issues. He has analyzed the Utah complaint in a 40-page paper submitted for publication to the Wyoming Law Review. He also successfully represented four hunters in an ongoing public access corner-crossing case in Carbon County.

Compared to Utah’s initial complaint, the latest filing is “a much softer request … a much weaker ask than the headlines have made out,” Semerad wrote in an email. “In the end, Utah just wants the Court to tell Congress that it must give the Secretary of the Interior more leeway to sell off or transfer lands, eventually.”   READ MORE