Eight organizations have asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to reopen a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s July 13, 2026, proclamation reducing Bears Ears National Monument. The groups are also seeking to expedite their case and file a supplemental complaint addressing the latest order.
The proclamation reduced Bears Ears from approximately 1.35 million acres to 121,096 acres, removing protections from more than 90 percent of the monument, according to the filing announced by the Conservation Lands Foundation. It also terminated, or attempted to terminate, the Bears Ears Commission, a body established to support collaborative management of the landscape.
The plaintiffs are the Conservation Lands Foundation, Utah Diné Bikéyah, Archaeology Southwest, Patagonia Works, The Access Fund, A’Nuche, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. They argue that the Antiquities Act of 1906 allows presidents to establish national monuments but does not authorize them to revoke or substantially reduce monuments created by earlier administrations. In their view, that power belongs to Congress.
The litigation began in December 2017, after Trump’s first reduction of Bears Ears. The case was assigned to Judge Chutkan and has been administratively closed since early 2021, meaning it has not been on the court’s active docket. The new filing asks that the case be returned to active status.
The organizations say the monument contains ancestral dwellings, rock imagery, ceremonial places, historic structures and other cultural resources. They also point to paleontological sites, ecological habitat and recreational areas. Bears Ears remains connected to the five Tribal Nations that led the effort to establish permanent protection through the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition: the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Zuni Tribe.
The coalition later worked through the Bears Ears Commission with the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service on a collaborative management approach. Archaeology Southwest’s Skylar Begay said the groups object both to the monument’s reduction and to the commission’s dismantling.
The filing also cites several mining claims that the organizations say have already been staked illegally within Bears Ears. The plaintiffs said they are prepared to respond if mining, drilling, road construction or other ground-disturbing activities begin.
