President Donald Trump has broad authority to revoke protected land designated as national monuments by past presidents, the Justice Department said in a new legal opinion.
The May 27 legal opinion from the Justice Department found that presidents can move broadly to cancel national monuments, challenging a 1938 determination saying monuments created under the Antiquities Act cannot be rescinded and removed from protection.
The memo could serve as a legal basis to attempt to withdraw vast amounts of land from protected status. Trump’s administration wants to prioritize fossil fuel and energy development, such as drilling for oil and gas and mining for coal and critical minerals, including on federal lands.
“For the Antiquities Act, the power to declare carries with it the power to revoke,” the Justice Department memo states. “If the President can declare that his predecessor was wrong regarding the value of preserving one such object on a given parcel, there is nothing preventing him from declaring that his predecessor was wrong about all such objects on a given parcel.”
The DOJ memo mentioned two California national monuments designated by former President Joe Biden shortly before leaving office. In Trump’s first term, the president shrank the size of two national monuments in Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante, and reduced the size of a national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.
Biden restored the three areas upon taking office and designated or expanded 12 national monuments during his term.
Environmental groups blasted the DOJ opinion.
“This opinion flies in the face of a century of interpretation of the Antiquities Act,” Axie Navas, designations director of conservation programs and policy at The Wilderness Society, said in a statement. “Americans overwhelmingly support our public lands and oppose seeing them dismantled or destroyed.”
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