The Supreme Court on Thursday tossed an emergency appeal seeking to stop the transfer of a sacred tribal site in Arizona to a copper mining company.
The decision adds another layer to an ongoing legal saga pitting environmentalists and tribal groups against the Trump administration, leaving in place a March 13 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to let the land exchange go through.
The litigants sought to stop the Trump administration from letting Resolution Copper acquire public land containing the Oak Flat tribal site. But in response to a request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. of the Ninth Circuit wrote on March 13 that the plaintiffs’ claim was unlikely to succeed on the merits.
In their emergency application for an injunction to the Supreme Court, a group of Apache women and girls said the land swap violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.
The Justice Department told the court the litigants asked the Supreme Court “not to preserve the status quo but to alter it.” Such a request must meet “a significantly more demanding standard than would apply to a stay request,” the government said.
The case is Lopez v. US, U.S., No. 25A1008, 3/19/26.
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