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Arizona legislative leaders cannot dismantle a new national monument near the Grand Canyon that they say would harm both state and local governments, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
In resolution of the memoranduma three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with a lower court ruling issued more than a year ago. Both courts ruled that Republican legislative leaders did not have standing to bring the lawsuit because all the damage they believed the monument would cause was speculative.
Republicans in the Arizona Legislature have criticized the creation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – the ancestors of the Grand Canyon National Monument since President Joe Biden’s designation that’s in 2023. This designation effectively banned mining on the approximately one million acres of land near Grand Canyon National Park that make up the monument.
Mining within the monument is already banned 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 monument’s creation unlawful and revoke its designation.
State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, also a Republican, from Mohave County, Colorado City and the City of Fredonia joined the lawsuit.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, along with Gov. Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, intervened in the lawsuit, advocating for protection of the monument.
Mayes celebrated the victory on Wednesday.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the people of Arizona and the Native communities whose ancestral homeland is protected by this monument,” Mayes said in a statement. “The court rejected every argument presented by Senate President Warren Petersen, Speaker of the House Steve Montenegro and Treasurer Kimberly Yee. I am proud to have stood up to defend these sacred and important lands.”
Biden created the monument in response to support from Native American communities whose ancestral homeland is in and near the Grand Canyon and who continue to draw on the canyon for the natural and cultural resources that are important and sacred to their communities.
In an unsigned memorandum, Justices Consuelo Callahan, John Owens and Michelle Friedland wrote that the Arizona Legislature cannot base its argument for dismantling the statue on “fear 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 is sad that Ninth Circuit has kicked the can down the road,” Petersen said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.
Petersen expressed disappointment that the court found the challenge “came too soon” and did not address the lawmaker’s contention that Biden had no authority to erect the monument at all.
“Arizona families should not have to wait years while our land and economic opportunities remain closed,” he said. “We will continue to fight to protect Arizona’s economy, jobs and sovereignty from expansive blocking of federal lands, including through all available avenues at the federal level. We are actively working with the Trump administration to reverse this illegal land grab.”
In the complaint, the Arizona Legislature argued that the 1906 Antiquities Act, under which Biden designated the monument, did not actually give him the authority to do so.
Instead of addressing this claim, the courts found that none of the complainants could demonstrate specific damage on which to base their claim.
“Their alleged loss of future tax revenue depends on whether uranium prices are high enough in 2032 (or whenever existing protections expire) that outside companies decide to start mining,” the appeal judges wrote. “However, there is speculation as to whether the appropriate economic conditions and incentives for uranium mining will exist in such a distant future.”
The courts agreed that the government entities’ claims that the monument would result in a loss of tax revenues from geothermal and mineral leases were also speculative.
“Plaintiffs do not allege that any entity ever attempted to engage in ‘mineral or geothermal leasing’ or that the monument site contained these resources at all,” the justices wrote.
The Ninth Circuit found equally unpersuasive Colorado City’s argument that creating the monument would threaten future water supplies. The city of Colorado argued that because the water is supplied from an aquifer beneath the monument, the federal government could decide to restrict access to that water in the future.
The judges wrote that Biden’s proclamation does not change 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 contention that the creation of the monument deprived it of the authority to sell, lease and set royalty rates for public lands surrounded by the monument. The justices wrote that the Legislature can “continue to manage and dispose of state lands as it sees fit.”
The court similarly rejected the Arizona Legislature’s claim that the monument designation harmed the state by forcing it to spend time and money “legislating, holding hearings, and publicly commenting” on monument-related issues.
“A plaintiff cannot ‘cause’ an injury ‘simply by choosing to spend money,’” the Ninth Circuit wrote.
The judges wrote that the Legislature failed to show it would have suffered any harm had it not passed the law, held hearings and made public comments about the monument.
The judges also rejected the legislator’s claim that he and the other plaintiffs could 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 countless third parties,” the justices wrote. “Any future economic harm resulting from higher energy prices caused by the Proclamation is therefore too speculative to justify its position.”
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 Tribe of Utah Paiute Tribe, Navajo Nation, San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Zuni Pueblo.
This story was originally produced by Arizona’s mirrorwhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes the Ohio Capital Journal and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
