Judge Reopens Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Lawsuits

A federal judge on Oct. 13 reopened lawsuits challenging cuts to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, including consolidated Bears Ears cases in which the Hopi Tribe and Utah Diné Bikéyah are plaintiffs. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia lifted stays on the cases, first brought in 2017 to challenge that year’s reductions.

The court had stayed the Bears Ears cases in light of the possibility that President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order would restore the monument’s original boundaries, the Bears Ears order says. It says those circumstances changed when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision June 23 and President Donald Trump then published a new proclamation reducing the monument. Trump’s July cuts shrank Bears Ears to about 121,000 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante to about 182,000 acres, Utah News Dispatch reported.

Both orders require federal defendants to give plaintiffs 48 hours’ notice before any ground-disturbing activities on lands excised by the 2026 proclamation. Neither order restores the monuments’ boundaries or decides whether the reductions are lawful.

In a July 14 statement, the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition said the new proclamation also terminates the Bears Ears Commission. The coalition said the commission had expected “meaningful government-to-government consultation” but that “no such consultation occurred.” It named the commission’s five Tribal Nations as the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Pueblo of Zuni.

“The Creator entrusted the Hopi people with the responsibility to serve as stewards of the land. A change in federal policy does not change that responsibility,” Hopi Tribe Vice Chairman Mikah Kewanimptewa, a Bears Ears commissioner, said in the statement. The coalition’s statement responded to the July proclamation, not to the court orders.

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a plaintiff, said the judge ordered the parties at an Oct. 15 status conference to agree on a briefing schedule and to confer on her notice order. The group said 20 mining claims were filed on lands cut from Bears Ears from 2018 to 2021, and that 72 had been filed as of mid-October.

Plaintiffs have asked to file amended and supplemental complaints. The orders set Oct. 20 for oppositions and Oct. 23 for replies, and the Bears Ears order cites “the speed at which prospectors are locating new mining claims in the reopened areas” in setting that schedule. The parties’ joint proposed order on how the notice will work is due Oct. 27.