The Trump administration has asked for a 60-day pause in ongoing federal lawsuits filed last year by five Western states challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s public lands rule.
The Department of Justice wrote in nearly identical court filings late Friday that the delays are warranted “to allow new administration officials to evaluate the litigation and determine how they wish to proceed.”
An attorney representing conservation and Native American groups that have intervened in the cases on BLM’s side said the DOJ requests suggest the new administration may be preparing to make moves to revise the controversial rule that seeks to place conservation on par with energy development, grazing and other uses of bureau rangelands.
The first DOJ motion for stay filed Friday, in the case overseen by Judge David Barlow of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, involves a legal complaint filed by Utah and Wyoming that, among other things, argues BLM violated federal law by not conducting a detailed environmental analysis of the rule’s impacts before finalizing it.
