According to a recent legal opinion from a key adviser within the U.S. Department of Justice, President Donald Trump possesses the authority to revoke the status of two national monuments in California, a designation established by his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, and any others bestowed by past presidents.
The document, dated May 27 and released earlier this week, overturns a 1938 legal opinion and potentially paves the way for the Republican president to remove federal protections for millions of acres of land previously designated as national monuments. National monuments are designated by presidents to highlight a site’s cultural, historical, or scientific significance, while national parks are created by Congress primarily to safeguard outstanding scenic features or natural phenomena.
Turning now to the broader implications, Lanora Pettit, who directs the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, was solicited by the White House for a new opinion as Trump deliberated over the revocation of Biden’s January decision to designate two California sites of importance to Native American tribes as national monuments. The Chuckwalla National Monument and the Sattitla Highlands National Monument preserve over 624,000 acres and 224,000 acres, respectively, of culturally and geologically significant land.
To understand this fully, we should note that Biden based his decision on the Antiquities Act of 1906, a law invoked by numerous presidents to designate over 100 national monuments. A 1938 opinion by Attorney General Homer Cummings, who served under Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt, has historically been cited as limiting the power of presidents to undo such designations.
In a 50-page legal opinion, Pettit argued that the Antiquities Act grants presidents not only the power to establish national monuments on federal lands but also the authority to determine that they are no longer deserving of protection. The significance becomes clear when we consider that no president has previously abolished a national monument. This raises important questions about the future of these protected lands.
The evidence suggests that since the Antiquities Act’s inception, presidents have “from time to time diminished” the land set aside to safeguard monuments. In his first term, Trump reduced the size of the Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument by half, both in Utah, before Biden restored both monuments to their original size.
According to reliable sources, the White House has yet to decide if and when Trump will revoke the monument status for the two California sites or any other monuments.