The Biden administration is urging a federal court to keep a pair of legal challenges over the shrinking of two Utah national monuments on hold, warning that dismissing the lawsuits could risk removing more than 2 million acres from those sites.
In separate motions filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice called for keeping both lawsuits on pause pending the outcome of a related case in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The parallel lawsuits center on the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears monuments whose boundaries have fluctuated by millions of acres in recent years depending on which political party controls the White House.
“Utah’s true goal here appears to be to have this case dismissed as moot (based on the Biden Proclamation), so that if Utah does prevail in the Utah litigation and obtain an order vacating the Biden Proclamation, there would be no pending challenge to the Trump Proclamation (which has not been rescinded), and Plaintiffs could find themselves time-barred from refiling a new challenge to revive their claims,” DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division attorney Romney Philpott wrote.
