A long-simmering legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s restoration of more than 2 million acres of Utah public lands to national monuments must return to federal court for a new review, a panel of appellate judges ordered Tuesday.
The decision comes nearly two years after the three-judge panel heard arguments in the case filed by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) and other state officials, which seeks to limit presidential powers to create national monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906.
Environmentalists who intervened in the court case greeted the ruling as an incremental victory, noting that the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused Utah’s request to issue its own ruling on the monuments.
“We are confident that President Biden’s restoration of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments — which this appeal sought to undermine — was within his powers under the Antiquities Act,” said Steve Bloch, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance’s legal director.
