16. Department of the Interior · Minor
Defend monument reductions to the Supreme Court
Printed page 532 16. Department of the Interior
“Furthermore, the new Administration must vigorously defend the downward adjustments it makes to permit a ruling on a President’s authority to reduce the size of national monuments by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
What has happened
- Not started
No litigation over the July 2026 monument reductions has been found, so no defense of them has been mounted and no petition for certiorari on a President's authority to reduce a monument exists. The CourtListener corpus, fetched 2026-08-28 and searched on the Antiquities Act and national-monument keywords, contains no case filed after the proclamations. The one live appellate case runs the other way: in Garfield County, Utah v. Trump the Tenth Circuit held on 2026-06-23 that a district court may decide whether a President exceeded the Antiquities Act's "smallest area compatible" limit, and remanded — a ruling on the enlargement of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, with the United States as appellee defending the designations. The Office of Legal Counsel opinion of 2025-05-27 is the administration's stated position that the Act permits revocation; it has not yet been tested.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
There is nothing yet to defend. The two reduction proclamations issued on 2026-07-13 (#1495) and no challenge to them appears on the docket.
The Tenth Circuit opinion cited as Evidence was read from the court’s own slip opinion at https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opinions/010111456571.pdf, which would not open for us directly (the court’s site answered “Request Rejected”) and is not written as the Evidence URL for that reason; the CourtListener record is cited instead.
- Action
- other
- Object
- Presidential authority to reduce national monuments
- ID
- 1496