Judge reopens lawsuits challenging cuts of Bears Ears, Grand-Staircase

Ruins and a petroglyph along the sheer face of Arch Canyon in Bears Ears National Monument. (Getty Images)Legal challenges first filed against President Donald Trump’s cuts to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments almost a decade ago can move forward after he downsized them once again and more sharply this summer, a federal judge ruled this week in Washington, D.C. 

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan lifted stays on the lawsuits Tuesday, allowing the cases to move forward and requiring the Trump administration to give 48-hours’ notice prior to ground-disturbing activities on lands cut out of the monuments. 

Environmental groups and tribal organizations waged legal battles to restore the monuments after Trump’s prior reductions during his first term in 2017. The cases were stayed when former President Joe Biden restored the boundaries in 2021. 

After Trump in July redrew the boundaries once again, the environmental groups moved to reopen the cases, noting mining claims have been filed on lands cut out of the new boundaries. 

Steve Bloch, legal director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said in a Thursday statement that “irreplaceable cultural resources and the monuments’ unique geology and flora and fauna are now at risk from activities like mining.”

Trump and the White House have said the Obama and Biden administrations abused the Antiquities Act when they used it to create the monuments and that Trump’s July orders rightsized Bears Ears to allow for common-sense land use and mining of uranium, copper and other critical minerals. 

In his first term in the White House, Trump reduced Bears Ears from roughly 1.35 million acres to roughly 228,000 acres, and Grand Staircase-Escalante from about 1.87 million acres to roughly 1 million acres. In this summer’s bigger round of cuts, he shrank Bears Ears to about 121,000 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante to about 182,000 acres.

State leaders have long said the monuments are too expansive and restrictive. Utah’s Republican governor, House speaker and congressional delegation joined Trump in the Oval Office as signed the orders. 

Former President Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996. Bears Ears, established by then President Barack Obama in 2016, was the first monument in the nation created at the urging of Native American tribes to whom the land is sacred.

This story was originally produced by Utah News Dispatch, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Florida Phoenix, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.