On Monday, January 13th at 7:30 am, we were anxiously refreshing our website browsers. On another day, we might have been trying to snag a coveted river or backcountry permit; this time, though, we weren’t daydreaming of a future adventure.

But let’s back up for a minute.

“Return of the Great Land Grab” was the feature article headline in our Autumn/Winter 2024 issue of Redrock Wilderness. In that piece, we told you how last August the State of Utah filed a request (in legal lingo: a motion for leave to file a bill of complaint) with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), asking it to take the extraordinary step of letting Utah bring a case directly to the nation’s highest court and bypass all lower courts.

Utah was arguing that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to own “unappropriated” federal public lands inside the state’s boundaries. As Utah defines it, this open-ended term “unappropriated” excludes national parks, national monuments, conservation areas, and national forests. But at 18.5 million acres, it does include all the remaining BLM land in the state, over 5.4 million acres of which is proposed as wilderness in our signature legislation, America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act.

And the relief Utah was asking the court to grant? Nothing less than an order directing that the federal government begin to dispose of—or sell off—those 18.5 million acres of BLM-managed lands.

This argument and the request to SCOTUS were so radical that in December 2024, SUWA filed our own litigation against Utah Governor Spencer Cox and then-Attorney-General Sean Reyes. We alleged that they violated the Utah Constitution’s provision that the “people inhabiting this State do affirm and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within [its] boundaries.” This language was a condition of statehood and is found in both Utah’s Constitution and the Utah Enabling Act, which led to Utah’s entry into the Union.

Back to January 13th. Two results were possible: either a majority of the justices would grant the state’s request (meaning the high court would take up the case and eventually issue a decision) or the court would deny the request. Just two days before, we had rallied on the steps of the Utah State Capitol with nearly a thousand other passionate public lands advocates (see page 15). In a week, President Trump would be sworn in. That morning, you could cut the tension with a knife.

Then, promptly at 7:30, with one simple sentence, some of that tension was released: The motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied. SCOTUS was not taking up Utah’s lawsuit! We breathed a sigh of relief and began working on a statement to share the good news with our members and the media.

It’s important to emphasize that we said some of the tension was released. While it was wonderful news that SCOTUS rejected Utah’s long-shot bid, the state can still follow the more traditional legal path for its lawsuit: filing in federal district court, appealing the case to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, and ultimately petitioning for review once again before SCOTUS. We expect them to follow this path, likely soon. In the meantime, our litigation against the governor and attorney general will continue.

—Steve Bloch and Grant Stevens

The above articles first appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of our Redrock Wilderness newsletter. Become a member to receive our print newsletter in your mailbox 3 times a year.