Utah asks U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether federal government may permanently retain 'unappropriated' public lands

Rich Johnson, an attorney with the Utah Attorney General’s Office, told the Emery County Public Lands Council on Jan. 8 that the state has filed a complaint asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the federal government may constitutionally permanently retain so-called “unappropriated” public lands.

The complaint, Johnson said, targets roughly 18.5 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land in Utah out of about 22.8 million acres administered by the BLM in the state. The suit asks a single legal question: can the federal government permanently retain those unappropriated lands rather than dispose of them, Johnson said.

Kathy Davis, section chief for public plans in the Attorney General’s Office, joined Johnson for the Council presentation and emphasized that the state is not, in that filing, asking the court to transfer specific lands to Utah. “The lawsuit in front of the Supreme Court does not ask for transfer of lands to the State of Utah. It asks only for the Supreme Court to determine whether it’s constitutional for the federal government to continuously retain these unappropriated lands,” Davis said.

Why it matters: If the court accepts the case and rules in a way favorable to the state, it could prompt large-scale changes in how those federal lands are managed and who makes management decisions. Johnson and Davis described scenarios the state has analyzed, including the statutory trigger that…