Appeals court blocks Republican bid to dismantle Grand Canyon National Monument

Arizona’s legislative leaders can’t
dismantle a new national monument near the Grand Canyon that they
claimed would harm both the state and local governments, a federal
appeals court ruled Wednesday. 

In the memorandum ruling,
a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
unanimously agreed with a lower court ruling made more than a year ago.
Both courts ruled that Republican legislative leaders lacked standing to
bring the lawsuit because all of the harms they claimed the monument
would cause were speculative.

Republicans in the Arizona
Legislature have criticized the creation of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah
Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument
since President Joe Biden designated it in 2023.
That designation effectively barred mining on the roughly one million
acres of land near Grand Canyon National Park that make up the
monument. 

Mining on the land within the monument is already barred until at least 2032, but the new designation will ban it indefinitely. 

Senate President Warren Petersen and
former House Speaker Ben Toma, both Republicans, filed a lawsuit in
2024, asking the court to declare the creation of the monument unlawful
and to set aside its designation. 

Joining in the suit were State
Treasurer Kimberly Yee, who is also a Republican, Mohave County,
Colorado City and the town of Fredonia.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes,
alongside Gov. Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, intervened in the lawsuit to
argue for the preservation of the monument. 

Mayes celebrated the win on Wednesday. 

“Today’s ruling is a victory for the
people of Arizona and for the Indigenous communities whose ancestral
homelands are protected by this monument,” Mayes said in a statement.
“The court rejected every argument Senate President Warren Petersen,
Speaker of the House Steve Montenegro, and Treasurer Kimberly Yee put
forward. I am proud to have stood up to defend these sacred and
important lands.”

Biden created the monument in
response to advocacy from the Native American communities whose
ancestral homelands are located in and near the Grand Canyon and who
still rely on the canyon for natural and cultural resources that are
significant and sacred to their communities.

In the unsigned memorandum, Judges
Consuelo Callahan, John Owens and Michelle Friedland wrote that the
Arizona Legislature couldn’t base its arguments for dismantling the
monument on its “fears of hypothetical future harm.” 

Callahan was appointed to the Ninth
Circuit by President George W. Bush, while Owens and Friedland were
appointed by President Barack Obama. 

“It’s sad to see the Ninth Circuit kicked the can down the road,” Petersen said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror. 

Petersen said he was disappointed
that the court decided the challenge “came too soon” and failed to
address the legislature’s claim that Biden lacked the authority to
create the monument in the first place.

“Arizona families should not have to
wait years while our land and economic opportunities remain locked up,”
he said. “We will continue fighting to protect Arizona’s economy, jobs,
and state sovereignty from this expansive federal land lock-up,
including through any available avenues at the federal level. We are
actively working with the Trump administration to undo this illegal land
grab.” 

In the challenge, the Arizona
Legislature argued that the Antiquities Act of 1906, which Biden used to
designate the monument, didn’t actually give him the power to do so. 

Instead of addressing that claim, the
courts ruled that none of the entities that brought the challenge could
establish a concrete injury upon which they could base their case. 

“Their alleged loss of future tax
revenue depends on uranium prices being sufficiently high in 2032 (or
whenever the pre-existing protections expire) such that third-party
companies would choose to begin mining,” the appellate judges wrote.
“But it is speculative whether the right economic conditions and
incentives for uranium mining will exist so far into the future.” 

The courts agreed that claims from
the government entities that the creation of the monument was losing
them tax revenue on geothermal and mineral leasing were also
speculative. 

“Plaintiffs fail to allege that any
entity has ever sought to engage in ‘mineral or geothermal leasing,’ or
that the monument land even contains those resources,” the judges wrote.

The Ninth Circuit found Colorado
City’s argument that the creation of the monument endangered its future
water supply equally unconvincing. Colorado City claimed that because
its water was supplied from an aquifer beneath the monument, the federal
government might decide to restrict access to that water in the
future. 

The judges wrote that Biden’s
proclamation doesn’t alter existing water rights and “there is otherwise
no reason to speculate that the federal government will ‘reduce
Colorado City’s water supply,’ as Colorado City fears.”

The Ninth Circuit also disagreed with
the Arizona Legislature’s claim that the creation of the monument
strips it of its power to sell, lease and set royalty rates for state
land surrounded by the monument. The judges wrote that the legislature
could “continue to manage and dispose of state land as it sees fit.”

The court similarly shot down the
Arizona Legislature’s claim that the monument designation harmed the
state by forcing it to channel time and money to “passing laws, holding
hearings, and publicly commenting” on issues caused by the monument. 

“A plaintiff may not ‘manufacture’ an injury by ‘simply choosing to spend money,’” the Ninth Circuit wrote. 

The judges wrote that the legislature
had failed to show that it would have suffered any harm if it hadn’t
passed laws, held hearings or made public comments relating to the
monument. 

The judges also dismissed the
legislature’s claim that it, and the other plaintiffs, might lose money
in the future due to increases in energy prices caused by the ban on
uranium mining within the monument. 

“Future energy prices depend on many
unknown variables and the ‘unfettered choices’ of innumerable third
parties,” the judges wrote. “Any future economic harm from higher energy
prices caused by the Proclamation is accordingly far too speculative to
support standing.” 

The tribal nations with ancestral
lands within the monument include the Havasupai Tribe, Hopi Tribe,
Hualapai Tribe, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, Las Vegas Paiute Tribe,
Moapa Band of Paiutes, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, Navajo Nation, San
Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, and
the Colorado River Indian Tribes.