FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: William Perry Pendley, 303/292-2021, Ext. 30
DENVER, CO. A nonprofit, public-interest
legal foundation with decades of experience battling illegal orders,
decrees, and regulations by the federal government regarding western
federal land today argued that President Trump possesses constitutional
and legal authority to rescind, revoke, and reduce illegal national
monument decrees issued by both President Bill Clinton and Barack
Obama. Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), which filed a federal
lawsuit in 1997 challenging the creation of the vast Grand Staircase
Escalante National Monument by Clinton in Utah and over the objections
of Utahans, argues in comments filed with the U.S. Department of the
Interior today that assertions that the monument decrees issued by
Clinton and Obama are set in stone and may not be modified are
unavailing, have no merit whatsoever, and should be ignored by President
Trump and his advisors.
“Just as no Congress can bind a future
Congress, so can no president bind the nation in perpetuity,” said
William Perry Pendley, MSLF president. "It doesn’t make any sense to
argue that President Trump lacks the legal authority to right the wrongs
done purportedly pursuant to the Antiquities Act of 1906. I don’t
think it would take the federal courts long at all to dispose of any
challenge to the presidential authority to do this.”
The Act delegates authority to the
president to designate as national monuments “historic landmarks,
historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or
scientific interest” on federal lands, requiring, in part, that the
designations “shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the
proper care and management of the objects to be protected” on land
“owned or controlled by the Federal government.” The Act was passed for
the purpose of “provid[ing] protection to the large Indian ruins of the
southwest.” Indeed, the legislative history of the Act demonstrates
that Congress was concerned singularly with “the preservation of the
remains of the historic past[,]” and that its entire and sole purpose
was in order “to create small reservations reserving only so much land
as may be absolutely necessary for the preservation of these interesting
relics of prehistoric times.” Congress “specifically rejected broader
versions of the law that included protection of scenic areas within the
Act.”
Although no president has ever revoked a
national monument designation, the power to revoke or diminish a
national monument is inherent in the powers granted by the Act; in fact,
presidents have diminished the size of national monuments established
by their predecessors. Moreover, the conclusion of the Attorney General
of the United States in 1938 that the Act does not authorize the
president to revoke national monument completely was in error because of
his misinterpretation of a 1862 Attorney General opinion. Nonetheless,
the Attorney General did concede that “the president is free to revoke,
modify, or supersede his own orders or those [of] a predecessor, ” to
ensure the designations is limited to “the smallest area compatible”
with protection of the objects at issue. Therefore that may be no area
at all. Furthermore, each branch of government can undo its earlier
decisions; the Executive Branch is no different. Even the U.S.
Constitution is not immune from its citizens’ decisions to change it.
Mountain States Legal Foundation, created
in 1977, is a nonprofit, public interest law firm dedicated to
individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and
ethical government, and the free enterprise system. Its offices are in
suburban Denver, Colorado.
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