U.S. Department
of Justice
The Best of the Rest
Because the Natural Resources Section is responsible for litigating cases arising under more than 80 natural resource, environmental, and cultural resource statutes, as well as various treaties, international agreements, interstate compacts, and congressional referrals, our four major focus areas tell only part of our story. Examples of other practice areas include:
Affirmative Litigation
While NRS primarily handles defensive litigation, in more recent years, the Section has started to bring more affirmative actions on behalf of various federal agencies. For example, in 2022, the State of Arizona began constructing "walls" composed of multi-ton shipping containers on federal lands along the Arizona-Mexico border, without authorization from the federal agencies charged with administering those lands. The State's construction impacted lands and projects managed by the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, destroying trees, filling drainages, and blocking wildlife passages. It also interfered with agency missions, including easements held by the U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission, which monitors certain United States' treaty obligations with Mexico. The Natural Resources Section filed an affirmative lawsuit against Arizona for trespass and constitutional violations, leading Arizona to immediately stop the installation project and to remove all the shipping containers from federal lands. While removing all shipping containers from United States’ properties, Arizona completed extensive remediation work on National Forest lands and subsequently paid the United States more than $2.1 million dollars to allow the U.S. Forest Service to complete additional remediation and revegetation work along the border. Based on these positive results, NRS voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit in September 2023.
Defending National Monuments
NRS is responsible for defending the establishment of national monuments and modifications of monument boundaries by United States Presidents. Most recently, we defended a first of its kind marine National Monument that protects important historic and cultural resources while also preserving the environment. In Fehily v. Biden and Massachusetts Lobstermen v. Ross, NRS successfully defended challenges to the designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a unique and environmentally sensitive swath of ocean in the Georges Bank off the coast of New England. Seamounts is the first major marine National Monument established in the Atlantic Ocean.
Plaintiffs, commercial fisherman, challenged President Biden’s Presidential Proclamation No. 10287, issued on October 8, 2021, under the Antiquities Act. The proclamation restored a ban on commercial fishing within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The Monument encompasses nearly 5,000 square miles of waters and submerged land off the coast of Cape Cod in the Atlantic Ocean and is the home of undersea canyons, extinct volcanoes, and the diverse ocean ecosystems that support a wide range of marine life, including whales, sea turtles, and cold-water corals. Plaintiffs sought a court order abolishing the Monument and opening it to commercial fishing but when confronted with strong challenges to their standing to sue, plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit. NRS’ defense of this suit preserves this important, first-of-its-kind marine monument for future generations.
NRS also recently obtained the dismissal in district court of two challenges to President Biden’s proclamations expanding the boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, where various groups had alleged that the proclamations exceeded the President’s statutory authority. The Division is now defending that victory on appeal. And, in separate litigation, the Division successfully defended NRS victories in the Ninth and D.C. Circuits in cases involving the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, where various plaintiffs had argued that another statute that governs some of the affected land (the Oregon and California Railroad and Coos Bay Wagon Road Grant Lands Act) prohibited the withdrawal of that land from timber production. In addition to these cases, NRS is currently defending President Biden’s 2024 proclamation establishing the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, against various claims including one alleging that the Antiquities Act is itself unconstitutional.