Addy BairdA lawsuit Utah filed against the federal government is in limbo after President Donald Trump issued a pair of executive orders — again — downsizing two Utah monuments.
Utah Attorney General Derek Brown, in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune, called Trump’s orders a “major step in the right direction,” but did not go so far as to say the state’s case was now settled.
In 2022 — after then-President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s original orders shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments — Utah, along with Kane and Garfield counties and several other groups, sued the federal government, arguing Biden exceeded his authority under the Antiquities Act by restoring the boundaries.
Trump’s latest orders on the monument, issued Monday afternoon, collectively cut nearly three million acres out of monument protection, including 1.69 million acres of land from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and 1.24 million acres for Bears Ears National Monument — or roughly 90% of the land previously protected in each monument.
The orders came less than a month after a federal appeals court reversed a dismissal of the lawsuit, sending it back to a district court in late June.
“Utah has fought hard to enforce Antiquities Act limits on monument size, and we will continue fighting to ensure the law is applied faithfully — and that Utahns have lasting certainty about the lands they call home,” Brown’s statement read.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson | AP) President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order modifying the Bears Ears National Monument in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, July 13, 2026, in Washington.
But, Brown said, “our work isn’t finished.”
“The long-term answer isn’t found in which president happens to occupy the White House,” he said. “The answer lies in honoring the textual limits the Antiquities Act already places on monument sizes. Utah will keep pressing until that’s the reality, not just the ideal.”
Steve Bloch, the legal director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, who is also a defendant in the lawsuit, said in an interview that the state and the other plaintiffs in the case “obtained the relief that [they were] after,” making the case moot.
“I think the state’s lawsuit is very likely over,” Bloch said. “They obtained much, if not all, of the result that they were after with the president’s two executive orders yesterday, and I expect in the coming weeks or months that will become clear in the district court that the state’s case is done.”
Brown’s argument, Bloch said, sounds like the attorney general is seeking an “advisory opinion,” or for the court to rule on the limits of the Antiquities Act itself. But the district court reconsidering the case, Bloch noted, “doesn’t have the power to entertain that.”
John Ruple, a professor at the University of Utah law school, said in an email that Trump’s latest orders and the state’s lawsuit are “intimately related.”
Trump’s Department of Justice is now likely to argue that the case should be dismissed, Ruple said, “by claiming that there is no live controversy following yesterday’s repeal.”
And while that may end the state’s lawsuit, he added, it “breathes life back into the cases challenging President Trump’s original attempts” to reduce the sizes of the monuments.
Bloch agreed. SUWA and other groups who challenged Trump’s original downsizing of the monuments are going to continue fighting, he said.
“This is not going to be the last word,” Bloch added.
It will be several weeks, however, before the next steps — if any — in the state’s lawsuit become clear. Though the appeals court sent the case back down to the district court, the case has yet to be formally taken up again.
“We’re on a slow roll here over the next few months to figure out what, if anything, remains in the state’s case,” Bloch said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, several other parties to the lawsuit did not, or said they could not, comment on the status of the case.
A spokesperson for Kane County said Tuesday they could not comment on an ongoing lawsuit, while Garfield County, the White House and the Bureau of Land Management did not respond to requests for comment.
On Wednesday, a Department of the Interior spokesperson said they couldn’t comment on the pending lawsuit, but Trump was “rectifying” Biden’s wrong.
Trump’s shrinking of the monuments, the spokesperson said, reverses “illegal overreaches, return[s] the Antiquities Act to its proper scope, and restore[s] access to hundreds of thousands of acres."
Note to readers, July 15, 12:48 p.m. • This story has been updated with a statement from a Department of the Interior spokesperson.
