The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Utah’s motion for it to hear a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s “continued possession of unappropriated public lands.”
While the court has not agreed to hear Utah’s case, the state’s claim that the U.S. government, which manages more than a quarter of the nation’s land mass, does not have a constitutional right to hold land “indefinitely” underscores decades of tension between locals and federal land-use policies across the west.
Utah’s motion seeks to directly file a “bill of complaint” to initiate a lawsuit before the highest court without a preceding string of lower court appellate rulings….