Supreme Court Rejects Utah's Attempt to Dispose of 18.5 Million Acres of Public Land

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Nadia Marji
|January 15, 2025

As seen in Field & Stream

By Travis Hall

Photo Credit: Bureau of Land Management


Conservationists in the hunting and fishing community are celebrating after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a Utah lawsuit that would have jeopardized vast tracts of federally-protected public land across the county

Earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) said it won’t hear a controversial lawsuit out of Utah that would have put millions of acres of public land in limbo. In its lawsuit, filed in August 2024, Beehive State officials brazenly claimed that the federal government has no constitutional right to own and manage vast swaths of public land spread across the country—and that those lands should therefore be removed from the public trust altogether. Conservation groups are applauding the SCOTUS decision to refuse the lawsuit, saying it would have led to an unprecedented loss of access to prime hunting and fishing grounds all over the Western United States.

With its 94-page petition, Utah sought to remove as much as 18.5 million acres of public land in the state from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The court filing took specific issue with what the authors called “unappropriated public lands within [Utah’s] borders.” It claimed that such lands are held by the BLM without being “reserved for any designated purposes.” 

Implications Beyond Utah

According to Madeline West, Vice President of Western Conservation at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), the lawsuit would have had broad ramifications for federally-managed lands outside of Utah and outside of the BLM. "What they’re arguing is that, constitutionally, the federal government shouldn’t be allowed to own these lands," West tells Field & Stream. "And, therefore, the federal government should be required to dispose of them."

That would result in a forced transfer of all but a few of our federally managed lands, West says. And it begs the question: To whom would these lands be transferred and for what purpose? "It’s not as if multiple-use mandates would carry over if these lands were transferred," she says. "Those of us who advocate for public access to amazing hunting and fishing grounds would have to start from scratch in justifying our access."

American hunters and anglers enjoyed unparalleled access to more than 640 million acres of federally-protected public land nationwide. The BLM alone administers more than 245 million acres throughout the West. While the agency has long managed its holdings for timber extraction, energy production, and livestock grazing, BLM lands are enjoyed by countless Americans every year for everything from sage grouse to elk hunting. And with the recently enacted Public Lands Rule, the agency added the long-term conservation of its vast tracts of hunting and fishing habitat to its official set of management principles. 

In a September interview with F&S, Patrick Berry, CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA), said a favorable ruling in Utah's lawsuit would have put lands managed by other federal agencies on the chopping block as well. "There are 210 million acres of land throughout the West that fit under this category of unappropriated land,” he said. “If Utah prevails here, you're talking about an outcome that would impact BLM lands, U.S. Forest Service lands, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands, and other lands managed by federal agencies.”

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About Nadia Marji
Vice President of Marketing & Communications, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers