After years of controversy, Utah is challenging federal control of unappropriated public lands within the state, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to address whether the federal government can hold those lands indefinitely.
The state argues nothing in the Constitution authorizes the federal government “to hold vast unreserved swathes of Utah’s territory in perpetuity, over Utah’s express objection, without even so much as a pretense of using those lands in the service of an enumerated power,” the lawsuit states.