Valley of The Gods, some of the public lands Utah legislators want to seize from the federal government | Photo: Bob Wick, BLM
Commentary: Utah's conservative politicians have been advocating the state seize federal lands for years. This year, the Utah legislature and governor have been pushing Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes to sue the federal government to hand over the 30 million acres of federal land within the state. The lawsuit has already cost the state $2 million, even though it hasnt yet been filed. It may never be filed. As of last Friday, Reyes hadn't made up his mind. If hes leaning toward dropping the matter, he just got some serious backup. A recent report by the Conference of Western Attorneys General, obtained by the Associated Press and publicized last week, suggests that the proposed lawsuit is based on shoddy legal arguments, misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the U.S. Constitution, and disregard for decades of Supreme Court decisions regarding public lands.
That report almost certainly won't sway advocates of devolving federal lands to the states, part of a decades-old movement whose members have their own private understanding of western history and federal law. You've probably heard of two recent campaigns by members of that movement: the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and the 2014 confrontation over illegally grazed cattle from the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada.
But to really understand the movement propelling Utah's attempted lawsuit, it's useful to consider an act of domestic terrorism that happened 21 years ago on American soil, which you've probably never heard of.
--
--
The Attorneys General's report doesn't contain much in the way of surprises: it's a thorough debunking of assertions about the constitution and federal case law made by people who want to get the feds out of the land protection business. Those anti-environmental activists claim the Constitution grants no authority to the federal government to own land in perpetuity, and that those public lands are rightfully the property of the states, which could sell those lands to private parties and thereby accomplish two things: 1) generate revenues for the state by selling the land, and 2) allow unrestricted exploitation of the land's resources for private profit.
Related
Court: State Can Limit Gold Mining Despite 19th Century Law
Feds OK Huge, Controversial Solar Project Near Mojave Preserve
Find Your New Favorite Park with FindYourPark.com
1 of 4
next
While the report doesn't offer a slam dunk rebuttal to those claims - the Supreme Court has never directly ruled on the legality of the federal government owning land in perpetuity - it is an exhaustive, authoritative counter to the claims of public land opponents, including the Utah legislature. The fact that the report is offered by the lead attorneys for the very states that would, theoretically, benefit from devolving federal lands to the states is especially devastating.
The sad thing: the people pushing for that devolution almost certainly won't agree. Social media analysts increasingly talk about the political bubbles we create, in which we're protected from opinions contrary to our own. Public land opponents conduct their affairs in the mother of all political bubbles, protected from contrary arguments, established caselaw, American history, and in too many cases, compassion for the people they disagree with, and for those people's families. And there's no better example of the latter than the terrorist attacks on a U.S. Forest Service ranger in 1995 in Nevada.
On March 30, 1995, someone placed a pipe bomb at the Carson City, Nevada office of Toiyabe National Forest district ranger Guy Pence. It exploded before Pence arrived for work the next day. No one was injured. A few weeks later, a bomb of substantially similar design exploded under Pence's van, parked in the driveway at his home. Pence wasn't home, but his wife and one of his kids were. They escaped injury by a stroke of luck: neither were sitting on the living room couch showered with broken glass and debris by the explosion.
Guy Pence, working on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response in Louisiana in 2010 | Photo: USFWS
No one has ever been charged with the 1995 bombings, though investigators did not lack for persons of interest. Pence, by enforcing federal law managing grazing and mining in the Toiyabe, had incurred the wrath of any number of people accustomed to using public lands as their own personal fiefdoms. Always present in the west, the numbers of people opposed to any federal management of public lands exploitation grew dramatically during the 1970s' Sagebrush Rebellion, an explicitly anti-environmental movement that started in reaction to proposed Wilderness designations. Rural Nevada was and is rife with Sagebrush Rebels. Many, perhaps most, are essentially decent people. But their ranks include a number of activists allied with some of the worst elements of American society.
The Sagebrush Rebellion's main gripe in the 70s was a federal review of large, unroaded areas of public land, which were to be considered for wilderness designation. The so-called Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE) process eventually recommended that 15 million acres of national forests be designated as Wilderness, and described an additional 10 million acres (and change) that merited further consideration for the same protection.
Wilderness designation blocks many forms of resource exploitation the Sagebrush Rebels held dear - though, notably, it doesn't prevent livestock grazing. Between the RARE programs and a 1976 law, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), which formally abolished the Homestead Acts allowing private citizens to c
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
02/12/2025
Case Study: How Mid-Atlantic Sports Network Moved to All-IP Distribution in 60 D...
02/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Lee Corso, Coach, Commentator, FirebrandBy Ken Kerschbaumer
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | S...
02/12/2025
SVG All-Stars: Dan Nabors, Senior Director, Remote Engineering, TNT SportsThe veteran tech leader is helping guide Warner Bros. Discovery's at-home' re...
02/12/2025
National Lacrosse League Opens Season With New Cloud-Based Official Replay-Revie...
02/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: The Cinematic Look in Live Production - Bridging Aesthetic...
02/12/2025
SVG India Announces Advisory Board; JioStar's Prashant Khanna Named ChairmanBy Ken Kerschbaumer
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 11:15 am
Print This Story |...
02/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: New AI Production Tools Workshop' Features ESPN, F...
02/12/2025
Written and directed by Hailey Gates, Atropia won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival....
02/12/2025
The lightweight and highly portable CORVUS-RAVEN, recently demonstrated at the V...
02/12/2025
The lightweight, rugged Panther 2 tri-band VSAT delivers high-speed data communications for Internet, VPN connectivity and video transmission over commercial an...
02/12/2025
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({...
02/12/2025
NGID volunteers in the United States
NGID volunteers in Mexico
NGID volunteers in India
NGID volunteers in Spain
NGID volunteers in Australia
NGID voluntee...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau has issued a reminder that stations in DMAs 111 through 120 must implement its audio descrip...
02/12/2025
SAN DIEGO Sony Electronics today introduced the Alpha 7 V (ILCE-7M5), the fifth generation of its Alpha 7 full-frame mirrorless lineup, powered by the newly dev...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has opened a docket for comments on Nexstar Media Group's proposed $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna and se...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON The National Association of Broadcasters has added a trio of media executives, Veronica Rodriguez, Matt Schnaars and Jeff Warshaw, to its board of di...
02/12/2025
MILAN, Italy Brightcove has released seven new features designed to expand global reach, improve audience engagement, enhance live-streaming quality and streaml...
02/12/2025
BCNEXXT, the developers of the advanced playout platform Vipe, today announced a new Service Provider Partner agreement with NPC Media, the Australian managed p...
02/12/2025
DPA Microphones today announces the immediate availability of its new N-Series Digital Wireless Microphone System for customers throughout the U.S. In addition ...
02/12/2025
Hiltron Communications reports a well attended and successful Space Tech Expo exhibition, held at the Messe Bremen from Tuesday November 18 through Thursday Nov...
02/12/2025
The beginning of September saw Riverfire by Australian Retirement Trust, in association with Channel 9 and Triple M, kick off the 2025 Brisbane Festival in spec...
02/12/2025
SGM Lighting is pleased to announce an exciting new partnership with ACT Entertainment, under which ACT will serve as the exclusive distributor for SGM's ne...
02/12/2025
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that Telia, the second largest telecom operator in Norway, is modernizing its broadband network with the company's i...
02/12/2025
European cloud data protection specialist Keepit is expanding its sales network in the DACH region and has gained TIM AG, one of the leading value-added distrib...
02/12/2025
Featured products at ISE 2026
This year s ISE 2026 theme "Push Beyond" reflects Calrec s direction of travel. The company is dedicated to supporting the AV an...
02/12/2025
Czech Television, the national public broadcaster, has deployed one of the largest LiveU live production projects in the region for live sports and news coverag...
02/12/2025
Test & measurement innovator, Leader Electronics, has announced the release of v8.2 software for its ZEN and ZEN-W Series, bringing advanced cinematic camera se...
02/12/2025
Global provider of video streaming software and services, Accedo, and OTT platform provider, Magine Pro, have signed a binding agreement to carve out and merge ...
02/12/2025
With proven success in broadcast, OTT, and content supply chains, K.S Avinash set to scale Skandha's service-first approach across APAC
Skandha Media Servi...
02/12/2025
AJA Video Systems has joined the RAVENNA community, a network of partners devoted to advancing the RAVENNA standard for distributing real-time audio over intern...
02/12/2025
HUNT VALLEY, Md. Sinclair and its wholly-owned subsidiary One Media Technologies have released a new report focused on how ATSC 3.0, the IP-based NextGen TV sta...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau has issued a reminder that stations in DMAs 111 through 120 must implement its audio descrip...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON Members of the Advanced Television Systems Committee have elected four industry veterans to three-year terms on the organization's board of direc...
02/12/2025
A new survey from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan highlights how important social media is for younger consumers, with Gen Z spending 5.1 hours a day on so...
02/12/2025
Faculty Notes: Fall/Winter 2025 Recent accomplishments, releases, and events by Berklee faculty.
December 1, 2025
By
Editorial Staff
The cast of Kind of M...
02/12/2025
Ring In The Holidays With Our Biggest Sale Ever On Ivory II Pianos!From now until December 31st, you can save 50% or more on every Ivory II piano and collection...
02/12/2025
Back to All News
Made in America: How Stranger Things' Electrified the US Economy
Entertainment
02 December 2025
GlobalUnited States
Link copied to cl...
02/12/2025
Back to All News
Culinary Class Wars' Season 2 Trailer Teases New Rules, R...
02/12/2025
--
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Telecommunication Unio...
02/12/2025
Harmonic's cOS Platform Will Redefine Subscribers' Quality of Experience, Lowering Churn SAN JOSE, Calif. - Dec. 2, 2025 - Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today...
02/12/2025
At AWS re:Invent, NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services expanded their strategic collab...
02/12/2025
S an Nollaig
Hollywood blockbusters The Banshees of Inisherin, Barbie and Oppenheimer make their Irish TV debut
Tune into the classics such as Love Actual...
02/12/2025
Showcasing fresh Irish storytelling and emerging talent Storyland 2025 signals a fantastic time for Irish drama
RT and F s ireann/Screen Ireland are proud to...
01/12/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
01/12/2025
Artemis II is NASA's first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The crew, from left: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Vic...
01/12/2025
IRVINE, Calif. Wooden Camera has introduced its new Accessory Collection for the Canon EOS C50. The new lineup includes a low-profile, gimbal-ready cage, expand...
01/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for its Dec. 18 Open Commission Meeting that will include a vote on a report an...
01/12/2025
In most years, a graph of annual local TV ad spending is about as predictable as an electrocardiogram of a reasonably healthy patient in a doctor's office. ...
Valley of The Gods, some of the public lands Utah legislators want to seize from the federal government | Photo: Bob Wick, BLM 
