FILE - In this June 22, 2016, file photo, the "House on Fire" ruins are shown in Mule Canyon, near Blanding, Utah. President Joe Biden will expand two sprawling national monuments in Utah, the governor said Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. President Donald Trump's administration in 2017 significantly downsized Bears Ears National Monuments and Grand Staircase-Escalante in southern Utah. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

More Backlash Against Utah National Park Lawsuit

(Cedar City, UT) — A new group has come forward against Utah’s efforts to defederalize its national monuments. More than 25 law professors specializing in natural recourses and public land have sent a brief offering arguments to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver calling it to dismiss Utah’s lawsuit against the Antiquities Act of 1906. The over 100-year-old law allows a President to protect land by designating it as a national monument. In 2021 President Biden used the law to restore Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments after former President Trump cut their acreage in 2017.