Courts don’t have jurisdiction to review the president’s discretionary authority to create national monuments and block oil drilling and mining under the Antiquities Act, including at Utah’s Bears Ears, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Judge David Nuffer, of the US District Court for the District of Utah, dismissed a lawsuit filed last year by the state of Utah and two Utah counties accusing President Joe Biden of abusing his power when he re-designated Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments after President Donald Trump shrank their boundaries.
Together, the monuments span federal land roughly the size of Connecticut, an area ...