Biden Public Lands Rule Draws Legal Challenge From Utah, Wyoming

The Biden administration failed to weigh environmental harms in its recently finalized Public Lands Rule, Utah and Wyoming officials argued in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The two states—with large amounts of federally administered lands—argued the Interior Department should’ve seriously weighed harms as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Instead, the agency improperly categorically excluded the rule from scrutiny, the lawsuit stated.

“Interested parties of all stripes entreated BLM to take the ‘hard look’ that NEPA requires before pushing through a rule that could harm the environment,” said the lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Utah. The rule “revises existing regulations and creates new land-management tools not contemplated or authorized” by Congress.

The Public Lands Rule, finalized in April by the Bureau of Land Management, added conservation as a “use” of public land on par with any other use allowed under the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

The rule governs roughly 245 million acres of federal land, mostly in the West, and informs the bureau’s approach to ecosystem protection, mining, grazing, logging, and oil and gas leasing across the region.

BLM officials said it was necessary to restore lands ravaged by invasive species, extreme wildfires, prolonged drought, and wildlife habitat fragmentation. The Biden administration’s climate agenda calls for the conservation of 30% of US land by 2030.

But Western states and Republican politicians fear conservation would limit other activities.

Republicans pressed BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning on the rule during a Capitol Hill hearing last week, with one senator claiming the bureau “manages these lands like a museum,” where visitors can look but not touch.

Stone-Manning told lawmakers that conservation could coexist with other uses of public land, such as allowing a transmission line to be built across conserved land and the restoration of grasses in grazing areas. Conservation cannot be the exclusive use of land, she said.

The lawsuit pointed to concerns both states raised with BLM last year during the rulemaking process.

The Utah Department of Natural Resources said the rule would endanger mature and old-growth forests, disallow the sort of active management most needed to support landscape health, and make restoration work harder to accomplish to the detriment of Utah’s environment, the lawsuit stated.

The Wyoming County Commissioners Association said the rule represents a “substantial departure from past interpretations of BLM’s responsibilities” and “will directly impact the actual management of public lands” that might implicate habitat for the greater sage-grouse.

BLM can’t escape performing an environmental impact statement by leaning on a categorical exclusion, which are used for projects that are deemed to have little impact, the states argued. The Biden administration recently has deployed such permitting exclusions to advance clean energy projects.

The attorney general offices of Utah and Wyoming are representing the states. The Interior Department is representing itself.

The case is State of Utah v. Haaland, D. Utah, No. 2:24-cv-00438, Petition filed 6/18/24.