The Utah Attorney General's Office on Tuesday delivered a motion to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals seeking permission to file a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit that is challenging the creation of the monument in September 1996 by then-President Clinton.

The Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation filed suit in October 1996, then again in November 1997, arguing that Clinton exceeded his authority under the Antiquities Act when he signed a proclamation authorizing the 1.7 million-acre monument in southern Utah.

Utah Deputy Attorney General Mark Ward says the state is not challenging the legitimacy of the monument - just its boundaries.

"The issue, for us, is whether the president reserved too much land to achieve the purposes of the monument," Ward said. "The Antiquities Act says the president shall preserve only the minimum amount of land that is necessary to protect the features that the president wishes to protect."

Ward says the state hoped to receive a decision from the appeals court, also based in Denver, within a few days. The state, he added, has made no proposals about how large the monument should be, saying that matter should be argued at the district court level.

Defenders of the monument, including several environmental groups that have intervened in the lawsuit on the side of the federal government, say they are stunned by the state's Tuesday filing.

"The monument is a fixture in southern Utah and the economy in southern Utah has prospered because of the monument," said Steve Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "Bottom line, it's a national treasure and fully deserving of the protection it received from the president. For Utah to come in a decade later, in support of having the monument set aside, is shocking."

Bloch also accuses the state of trying to have it both ways, because it received $50 million from the federal government in a 1998 exchange involving School Institution and Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) parcels within the monument.

Ward says the the land swap and the lawsuit are not connected. Says Bloch: "But for the monument, the state never would have gotten that $50 million check, and the parcels SITLA held in the monument never would have been exchanged. I doubt Utah will give back that $50 million."

State officials acknowledge that business is driving the move to shrink the monument, particularly the coal industry, which has long eyed deposits on the Kaiparowits Plateau, now within the monument's confines.

It was a battle that former Govs. Mike Leavitt and Olene Walker chose not to fight.

The deadline for filing for friend-of-the-court status passed on Nov. 24, but according to the state's brief, new Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. resolved to change Utah's position on the monument after being brought up to speed on the issue. Because of the transition, and because this was the earliest the administration could petition the court, it has asked the 10th Circuit to waive the deadline.

"We gave it a fresh, new legal look. It seems like the right thing to do," said Huntsman Chief of Staff Jason Chaffetz.

jbaird@sltrib.com

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Tribune reporter Rebecca Walsh contributed to this story.