On June 23, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a significant decision in Garfield County, Utah v. Trump, Nos. 23-4106 & 23-4107, holding that federal courts may review—and that sovereign immunity does not necessarily bar—challenges to a President’s designation of national monuments under the Antiquities Act. While the court stopped short of deciding whether President Biden’s expansions of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments actually exceeded statutory limits, it vacated the district court’s dismissal and remanded for the district court to interpret the Act’s substantive limits in the first instance. The decision sets up what could become the first judicial invalidation of a national monument proclamation in the statute’s 120-year history, and it deepens an emerging body of appellate authority subjecting presidential monument designations to ultra vires review.

On July 13, 2026, before the district court took up the remanded issues, President Trump issued two proclamations, one shrinking the Bears Ears monument from approximately 1.36 million acres to approximately 121,000 acres and the second shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante monument from approximately 1.87 million acres to approximately 182,000 acres.  The prior proclamations issued by President Obama, Proclamation 9558, and by President Biden, Proclamation 10285, established the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Commission (BEC) to give Tribal Nations a formal role in the monument’s management, was also ordered terminated by President Trump.  The July 13 proclamations open the removed lands to the multiple use public land laws, including US Forest Service sales, mineral entry under the mining law, and mineral and geothermal leasing under the mineral leasing laws.

Background

The Antiquities Act authorizes the President to declare “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest” situated on federal land as national monuments. 54 U.S.C. § 320301(a). A separate subsection provides that any land reservation “shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” Id. § 320301(b).

The monuments at issue have a contentious back-and-forth history. President Clinton reserved approximately 1.7 million acres for Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996, and President Obama reserved approximately 1.35 million acres for Bears Ears in 2016 (roughly 3.05 million acres combined). President Trump reduced the combined reservations to approximately 1.11 million acres in 2017. In 2021, President Biden reversed those reductions, reserving approximately 3.23 million acres in total—more than the original designations—and identified more than 500 protected “objects,” ranging from specific cultural and geological features to broader categories such as boulders, mule deer, and perennial streams.

Utah, two of its counties, several individuals, and the BlueRibbon Coalition sued, alleging that the proclamations exceeded the President’s statutory authority in two respects: (1) by designating things that do not qualify as “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, or objects of historic or scientific interest,” and (2) by reserving far more land than the “smallest area compatible” provision permits. Plaintiffs also brought Administrative Procedure Act (APA) claims against the implementing agencies. The district court dismissed all claims with prejudice on sovereign immunity and related jurisdictional grounds, and separately found that the individual and organizational plaintiffs lacked standing.

The Tenth Circuit’s Holdings

The Tenth Circuit affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded. Most significantly, the court held that the district court applied a flawed view of the ultra vires exception to sovereign immunity: a plaintiff need not allege that the President wholly lacked authority to designate monuments, but only that he designated things outside the categories Congress authorized.  The court reasoned that the Antiquities Act places “discernible limits” on presidential discretion, distinguishing it from statutes that commit decisions entirely to the President’s judgment, and that the mandatory “smallest area compatible” requirement in subsection (b) is not subject to the Act’s discretion clause.

Joining the Ninth and D.C. Circuits, the court further held that ultra vires review is not limited to claims of constitutional overreach and that the potential ambiguity of statutory terms like “object” does not commit their meaning to the President’s sole discretion. The panel expressly declined, however, to decide whether plaintiffs had plausibly alleged an ultra vires claim, remanding for the district court to interpret the statutory limits in the first instance and to determine whether the heightened ultra vires standard reaffirmed in Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas (2025) applies.

Separately, the court vacated the dismissal of the APA claims because the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) adoption of a final resource management plan (RMP) during the appeal superseded the interim plans plaintiffs had challenged. The remand order directs the district court to consider the effect of the final RMPs on the APA claims.  The Bears Ears RMP was groundbreaking in that it was developed through collaboration between five Tribes with ancestral ties to the area—The Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Zuni Tribe, and Ute Indian Tribe of Uintah and Ouray Reservation—working with the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service. 

The court affirmed dismissal of the individual plaintiffs and BlueRibbon, who waived their standing argument by raising it only in reply.

The BEC is expected to strongly support the importance of all of the “objects” identified in President Biden’s 2021 Proclamation and Tribal representatives have already pledged to challenge the July 13 Bears Ears proclamation in court.

Key Issues Going Forward

This decision has implications well beyond the two Utah monuments, particularly for parties with interests in development, resource extraction, recreation, or conservation on or near federal lands subject to monument designations. Stakeholders should consider the following:

  • A live merits question on remand. The central issue—whether the designated features qualify under the Act and whether 3.23 million acres satisfies the “smallest area compatible” requirement—now returns to the District of Utah for interpretation. The threshold standard of review remains unresolved and could materially affect how demanding the plaintiffs’ burden will be.
  • A widening circuit consensus on reviewability. The Tenth Circuit now joins the Ninth and D.C. Circuits in recognizing ultra vires review of presidential action that exceeds statutory limits, even where the limits appear in the authorizing statute itself. This consensus, combined with Loper Bright’s emphasis on the judicial role in statutory interpretation, may invite further challenges to monument designations and other discretionary presidential actions taken under limiting statutes.
  • Potential for Supreme Court review. Chief Justice Roberts’s 2021 statement in Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association questioning the scope of “objects” subject to designation and how to measure the area necessary for their management looms over this litigation. A decision on remand striking down or narrowing a proclamation could present an attractive vehicle for certiorari.
  • Practical effects on land management. Because BLM’s final RMPs have superseded the interim plans, parties relying on or contesting current management regimes for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase should monitor how the district court treats the APA claims and whether the underlying proclamations survive scrutiny.
  • Presidential action to reduce monument reservations.  President Trump’s 2017 reduction of the combined Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears reservations was challenged and the case was stayed pending the Tenth Circuit’s Garfield County decision.  In the interim, the Office of Legal Counsel to the President issued an opinion concluding that prior monument designations may be reduced or revoked. 49 Op. O.L.C. (May 27, 2025). In part, the July 13 proclamations rely on that decision.   

We will continue to monitor proceedings on remand and any petition for rehearing or certiorari, as well as President Trump’s Antiquities Act actions. Please get in touch with the authors or your SPB contact if you have questions about the Garfield County decision, the Antiquities Act, public lands and BLM resource management planning, or the implications for ongoing or anticipated federal lands matters.