Utah's elected officials have an incredibly unpopular lawsuit on their hands.
No, it's not about bringing our new hockey team to the Beehive state, but rather its federal lawsuit attempting to seize Bureau of Land Management acreage that the state houses within its borders. In its original complaint, Utah's AG argued that federal land within state borders should be maintained and controlled by the states, and managed as those states see fit. That sounds somewhat reasonable, that is until you learn that Utah doesn't have the funds nor the will to manage the lands it was attempting to seize control over.
The reality of the situation is that the current crop of elected officials in Utah just wanted to sell off said public lands to developers and mineral and gas conglomerates to make a quick buck. As they've done repeatedly with public lands they do control.
Yet, even though they have a somewhat cooperative Supreme Court, as well as an incoming administration that hates public lands too, the move is deeply unpopular, both among Utah's citizens, the citizens of the other states that signed onto Utah's lawsuit, and public land advocates across the country. It's so unpopular, and groups have hammered these officials so hard, that Utah recently changed its federal lawsuit.
But in doing so, they've also explicitly stated that they want to sell off the land and that it's never been about managing Utah's land.
