Wyoming is backing an effort by Utah to wrest ownership of U.S. Bureau of Land Management land from the federal government, arguing that states could “develop the land to attract prospective citizens.”
In an amicus brief filed Tuesday, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska and the Arizona Legislature expressed support for Utah’s quest to take its case straight to the U.S. Supreme Court. Utah wants to own BLM land that’s currently the property of all Americans, saying among other things that the federal holdings deprive the Beehive State of an equal footing with other states.
Gov. Mark Gordon announced the Wyoming plea this week. Wyoming’s U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman lent her name to a separate amicus brief supporting Utah, teaming with U.S. Sens. Mitt Romney, Mike Lee and other Western members of Congress.
Twenty-six Wyoming legislators also asked Tuesday to join the action if the Supreme Court agrees to take up the issue. Those 10 state senators and 16 representatives (see list below) say they might not stop after gaining state ownership of BLM’s property which is largely sagebrush and desert prairie steppe.
Wyoming legislators’ could extend their claims to “all former federal territorial lands … now held by the United States … [including] parks, monuments, wilderness, etc.,” their brief states.
The federal government has until Nov. 21 to respond to what conservationists call a “land grab.”
“This lawsuit is as frivolous as they come and a blatant power-grab by a handful of Utah politicians whose escalating aggression has become an attack on all public lands as we know them,” Jocelyn Torres, an officer with the Conservation Lands Foundation, a Colorado nonprofit, said in a statement.
Unappropriated
Utah and its allies argue that BLM lands are “unappropriated” and should be the property of Western States. Because of the federal government’s “indefinite retention” of 18.5 million BLM acres, “Utah is deprived of basic and fundamental sovereign powers as to more than a third of its territory,” its bill of complaint states.
Sagebrush rebellion efforts like Utah’s legal gambit have popped up — and fallen short — repeatedly since the movement arose in the 1970s. They’ve been countered in part by western states ceding — in their constitutions at statehood — ownership of federal property to the government and all Americans.
“The people inhabiting this state do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof,” the Wyoming Constitution states. Further, Western states received federal property at statehood — two square miles in many surveyed 36-square-mile townships in Wyoming — to support schools and other institutions.
“Only Congress can transfer or dispose of federal lands,” the Lands Foundation said.
Gov. Gordon sees it differently.
“Wyoming believes it is essential for the states to be recognized as the primary authority when it comes to unappropriated lands within our borders,” he said in a statement Thursday.
The BLM manages 28% of the land in Wyoming, the brief states, most of it “unappropriated.”
Leaving vexing legal complexities to Utah, Wyoming’s brief focuses on “harms that federal ownership of unappropriated lands uniquely imposes on western States on a daily basis,” the amicus filing states. “In short, western States’ sovereign authority to address issues of local concern is curtailed, and billions of dollars are diverted away from western States.”
A ruling in favor of Utah would “begin to level the playing field … and restore the proper balance of federalism between western States and the federal government,” the brief states.
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