Utah v. Haaland

Challenge to the Bureau of Land Management's “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule.

Challenge to the Bureau of Land Management's “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule.

Challenge to the Bureau of Land Management's “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule.

Challenge to the Bureau of Land Management's “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule.

Challenge to the Bureau of Land Management's “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule.

Three lawsuits were filed in three different federal district courts challenging BLM’s “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule. The State of Alaska filed a lawsuit in the District of Alaska; the States of Utah and Wyoming filed a lawsuit in the District of Utah; and trade associations filed a lawsuit in the District of Wyoming. North Dakota, Idaho, and Montana also filed a lawsuit in the District of North Dakota; the defendants filed a motion requesting that this lawsuit be transferred to the District of Utah. Utah and Wyoming challenged BLM’s reliance on a categorical exclusion for NEPA compliance. The categorical exclusion applies to “[p]olicies, directives, regulations, and guidelines: that are of an administrative, financial, legal, technical, or procedural nature; or whose environmental effects are too broad, speculative, or conjectural to lend themselves to meaningful analysis and will later be subject to the NEPA process, either collectively or case-by-case.”