As the conversation around a proposed congressional plan to sell off between 2 million and 3 million acres of public lands in the next five years intensifies, detractors of the plan recall a 2024 court case challenging federal public land holdings and how numerous Wyoming leaders supported it.
Last year, the state of Utah petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether the federal government’s holding of 65% of Utah’s lands erodes its sovereignty and violates the U.S. Constitution.
The high court in January quietly rejected the request to hear the case — but not until after 26 Republican state legislators, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and U.S. House Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Republican and the state’s lone representative, had filed documents in support of Utah.
Fast forward to 2025, and a spectrum of groups from hunters to environmentalists are railing against a plan by U.S. Rep. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to mandate the sale of between 0.5% and 0.75% of Bureau of Land Management and National Forest System parcels in the next five years. That plan has numerous carveouts to exclude national parks and other high-value areas.
The sold lands are to be frozen for a decade after their sale to fulfill housing needs and “associated community needs,” says the proposed bill.
To the proposal’s biggest detractors, the Wyoming leaders’ briefs signify that they agree with Lee’s generally unpopular plan, or at least the spirit of it.
Some of the state leaders who signed the briefs in support of public land transfer, however, cast that as an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Here They Are
State Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, wrote a guest column on Monday in Cowboy State Daily in which she called the governor, Hageman and the legislators “literally Lee’s partners in the public land grab.”
“These politicians like to hem and haw about ‘Oh, the states would manage the lands better,’” wrote Provenza.
But the end game, said Provenza, would be the same as the one contemplated in the U.S. Senate now: those shared lands would end up in private hands.
“We can clearly see now that the end game for transferring federal public lands to the states has always been and will always be to sell them off to the highest bidder,” she wrote, adding that Wyoming doesn’t have enough money to manage the lands in its borders that the federal government now manages.
“And that’s even more obvious now that we see counties cutting services to the bone, hospitals closing their maternity wards, and the state defunding education,” she wrote.
Wyoming did not altogether defund education but lost a significant court case this winter when a judge ruled that it doesn’t provide enough services to school children and needs to reevaluate its entire school funding scheme immediately.
Local governments are cutting budgets and services in light of recent property tax cuts.
“One bad fire season would bankrupt any public lands funds Wyoming had, and our public land heritage would be up on the auction block,” she wrote.
Not The Same
The difference between his backing of Utah’s case and his cautionary approach toward Lee’s plan is local control, Gordon indicated Monday.
The governor emphasized how important public lands are to sportsmen and others in Wyoming but contrasted that with the plight of “places that are surrounded by federal lands and are trying to grow.”
Communities need to be able to craft policies “that make sense so that we can allow for some responsible growth in areas for communities that are landlocked,” he said.
The West should also look to reduce checkerboard ownership in a “sensible way” with decisions made on a local level in a “very robust process.”
Lee's plan contemplates collaboration with local governments but doesn't give those entities, like county commissions, a kill switch to stop a problematic land transfer.
State Control
State House Speaker Pro Tempore Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland, voiced a strong opinion against Lee’s plan Friday, saying the government should not be meddling in the housing market.
And if the federal government wants to help people afford things, it should stop overregulating everyone and printing so much money, Haroldson told Cowboy State Daily at the time.
Haroldson was one of the 26 legislators who signed onto Utah’s case.
Like Gordon, Haroldson cast the two different events as an apples-to-oranges comparison where local control is key.
“State control is the key for the proper management of lands,” he wrote in a Monday text message to Cowboy State Daily.
Certainly had Wyoming’s federal lands shifted into state hands, they would have been under the more localized entity of the state government, though the Legislature would likely have had to pass a law to give county commissioners and town governments control over their fate as well.
“Local control is the key to making sure that the rights of our citizens and the preservation of the land is intact,” Haroldson wrote.
In light of that distinction, Haroldson said, he still stands behind his position from October: that the state could better steward public lands than the federal government does.
What The Governor’s AG Signed In October
Gordon’s then-Attorney General Bridget Hill in October signed onto an amicus brief in Utah v. U.S., along with the states of Idaho, Alaska, and the Arizona Legislature, voicing support for Utah’s position that federal lands – excluding national parks, military installments and tribal reservations – should shift into state hands. (The current Senate proposal also excludes national parks and reservations.)
But the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) control of about 28% of Wyoming’s land space is problematic, the brief says.
Many Wyomingites were at that time fearful of a BLM land management plan that some argued emphasized environmental conservation over other uses.
The brief reasons that by retaining control of huge swaths of lands in the “younger” Western states, the federal government has put them on an unequal footing of sovereignty compared to older states that don’t deal with as much federal holding.
“This arrangement gets federalism backwards,” says the document.
What State Lawmakers Signed In October
The amicus brief Wyoming lawmakers signed in support of Utah’s case notes that the federal government owns or controls about half of Wyoming’s surface estate and more than two-thirds of its subsurface minerals.
The brief argues that this exceeds the enclave clause of the U.S. Constitution, which provides for federal holdings for military uses and other needful public buildings – and that it hurts Wyoming.
Unlike Gordon’s filing for Wyoming, the lawmakers’ filing didn’t leave national parks untouched:
“By filing this brief, these Wyoming Legislators, of course do not intend to waive any ability to challenge the constitutional propriety of any particular decision to ‘appropriate’ lands,” just because they weren’t at issue in the case, says a footnote to the brief that addresses “parks, monuments, wilderness, etc.”
What Hageman Signed In October
Hageman, who has since warned people against overreacting to Lee’s current proposal, signed a brief with the Utah senator in October, in support of Utah.
Hageman did not return a Cowboy State Daily request for comment by publication time.
She has, however, spoken to Lee’s proposal at length in past interviews and statements, pointing to its carveouts.
The bill prohibits the sale of lands with special designations, such as national parks, national monuments, wilderness areas, or national recreation areas. It also prohibits the sale of any land where there is a valid existing right, and will protect mining claims, grazing permits, mineral leases, or rights of ways.
Nah
Ryan Semerad, the winning attorney in the well-known corner crossing case in which hunters’ ladder-vaulted a corner of private land to access public land, agreed with Provenza on the “end game.”
“To transfer (those) to the state brings failure,” said Semerad. “The management costs would swallow up their state budgets.”
And in Wyoming, state executives have a duty to use granted lands to support public schools, under the state constitution.
“Ultimately the end holder of these lands is not going to be a government that’s beholden to the public,” he said. “It’s going to be a private buyer.”
Provenza added in her own interview: "We can get lost in the nuance all we want but at the end of the day... are you willing to say 'I'm not willing to take public lands out of public hands'?"
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
