SUWA-case implications have top court worried

WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court justices worried aloud Monday that a Utah case could make federal judges, instead of the Interior Department, the new day-to-day managers of public lands.

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance wants the ability to sue the government to force action on protecting wildernesslike areas in Utah from off-road vehicle damage. "It's not like we want to take over an agency," SUWA attorney Paul M. Smith told the court in oral arguments.

"But it sounds like it," said Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Justice Antonin Scalia added that what SUWA seeks could bring "continued supervision of an agency" by a judge. "That's putting the district judge in the place of the secretary of the Interior."

But Smith said the alternative is to let Interior Department officials ignore the law.

SUWA and other environmental groups say the U.S. Bureau of Land Management ignored its own land-use plans and other rules prohibiting ORV damage on public Utah lands that are under consideration for designation as wilderness.

Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler argued such land-use plans are for BLM's internal planning only and are not enforceable by courts. He said they express goals that could be altered by such things as budget cuts.

The Utah district court used the same reasoning when it dismissed the original case, before a trial was held. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that, and the federal government appealed to the Supreme Court.

Smith said the public should have the right to sue to make an agency follow its own rules — especially when inaction is causing serious damage, as he contends ORVs are doing in Utah.

James S. Angell, attorney for Earthjustice, said after the oral arguments that the land-use plans are not just internal planning documents but "contracts" with the public that are adopted after a long public process.

"What the agency is saying here is that they can turn their back on those planning commitments," Angell said.

Smith noted that after the lawsuit was filed, the BLM did close many areas to ORVs as sought by SUWA and others. Angell added, "They only made those actions because there was litigation hanging over their head."