SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Today, Attorney General Sean D. Reyes announced that his office filed a brief in Utah v. Biden over the president’s unlawful designation of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. The legal action was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit after a District Court Judge ruled against the State’s position in August.
Utah’s challenge argues that the size of the two national monuments, covering vast landscapes of a combined 3.2 million acres, violated the Antiquities Act of 1906, which limits U.S. presidents to creating monuments “confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
Both national monuments were created under the Clinton and Obama administrations, respectively. President Clinton designated approximately 1.7 million acres for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and President Obama reserved about 1.35 million acres. In 2017, Utah state legislators passed two resolutions to reflect their constituents’ frustration with the reservations, urging then-President Donald Trump to rescind the Bears Ears National Monument in full and to modify the boundaries of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. President Trump reduced the two reservations (a combined 1.11 million acres) later that year to allow for more targeted protection of specific sites and to revive the multiple-use approach in the remaining areas.
However, in October 2021, President Biden issued two proclamations that substantially enlarged the borders of both National Monuments. Under the Biden administration’s new designations, the land included in the Bears Ears National Monument was 1.36 million acres, and the land included in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was 1.87 acres. Combined, the 3.23 million acres of land encompassed by the reservations were twice as large as Delaware, four times larger than Rhode Island, and just shy of the size of Connecticut.
