A 120-year-old law written to stop pot hunters from looting ancient Native American ruins in the American Southwest is now at the center of a constitutional battle over whether a sitting president can erase the conservation legacy of those who came before him. On July 13, 2026, President Trump signed two proclamations in the Oval Office that stripped more than 90 percent of the protected acreage from two of the country’s most significant national monuments in Utah. The legal firestorm that followed was entirely predictable – because the same argument has been running in American courts, unresolved, for nearly a decade.
The Antiquities Act itself doesn’t say a president can shrink a monument. The law authorizes the president to proclaim national monuments on federal lands containing “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest,” with the instruction that any reservation be limited to “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” What the law does not do is spell out what happens when a later president disagrees with a predecessor’s boundaries. That silence is the fault line running through every legal challenge filed since 2017.
The scale of the July 2026 reductions is hard to overstate. One proclamation reduced Grand Staircase-Escalante from approximately 1.87 million acres to approximately 181,500 acres; the other reduced Bears Ears from approximately 1.36 million acres to approximately 121,100 acres. Combined, the reductions remove nearly 3 million acres from monument protection. Sixty days after the signing, the lands removed from the monuments become eligible for mineral leasing, mining claims, and other public land uses.
What the Antiquities Act Actually Says
The Antiquities Act was signed into law on June 8, 1906, and was the first law that provided protection of natural and cultural resources and treasures on federal lands. Its origins were unglamorous. The Act was a response to concerns over theft from and destruction of archaeological sites and was designed to provide an expeditious means to protect federal lands and resources. Collectors and “pot hunters” had spent decades stripping prehistoric Native American sites across the Southwest, and Congress needed a tool that could move faster than its own slow legislative machinery.
Although Congress also has the authority to designate national monuments on federal or nonfederal land, its process tends to be slow and deliberative. The Antiquities Act, in contrast, allows a president to act quickly to protect federal land deemed significant and in imminent danger. That speed and unilateral authority – no congressional vote required – is both the law’s greatest strength and the source of its most persistent controversies.
After signing the Act into law, President Roosevelt used it eighteen times to establish national monuments, including what are now Grand Canyon National Park, Petrified Forest National Park, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, and Olympic National Park. Roosevelt used the authority in 1906 to establish Devils Tower in Wyoming as the first national monument. In the 120 years since, 18 presidents have used authority under the Antiquities Act to establish, enlarge, diminish, or make other changes to proclaimed national monuments, with a total of 168 monuments proclaimed, including in marine areas.
National monuments are lands that are legally protected from development. They are similar to national parks, but while national parks are created by Congress, national monuments are created by presidents through the Antiquities Act of 1906. That distinction matters enormously in the current legal battle: because Congress doesn’t vote on monument designations, there’s no legislative record establishing whether a later president can undo them by proclamation alone.
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase: A Decade of Boundary Wars
The two Utah monuments at the center of the 2026 dispute have been political flashpoints for years. Grand Staircase-Escalante was established by President Bill Clinton in 1996, protecting nearly 1.9 million acres of southern Utah canyon country known for its geological formations and paleontological discoveries. Two decades later, President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 following years of advocacy from Native American tribes, who argued the region contains thousands of culturally and spiritually significant sites.
The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, comprised of Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Tribe, and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, supported the monument and played a central role in its management and stewardship. With more than 100,000 archaeological sites and only one full-time law enforcement officer, the area represented the country’s most significant unprotected cultural landscape.
A little more than a year after its designation, President Trump reduced the size of Bears Ears by approximately 85%, from 1.35 million acres to roughly 228,000 acres. Trump also cut Grand Staircase-Escalante to approximately 1 million acres. The changes immediately triggered legal challenges from conservation groups, businesses, and tribal nations. The legal challenges centered on whether a president has the authority under the Antiquities Act to substantially reduce national monuments established by previous presidents.
Courts never delivered a final ruling. Before courts could rule, President Joe Biden restored and slightly expanded the monuments, rendering the lawsuits moot. The 2026 cuts are far more drastic than those in 2017, when Trump eliminated almost half of Grand Staircase-Escalante and 85% of Bears Ears in what was then the largest reduction of federal land protections in U.S. history.
The Legal Question No Court Has Answered
The central legal question – can a president shrink a monument designated by a predecessor? – remains formally unanswered by any federal court. Mark Squillace, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School who has studied the Antiquities Act for decades, argues that the text of the law simply doesn’t support the power Trump is claiming. The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) contends the Antiquities Act does not grant presidents the authority to revoke or significantly diminish existing monuments, arguing Trump’s action exceeds the law’s scope.
The president is not authorized by Congress to revoke monument designations. The extent to which presidents can unilaterally revoke past monument designations is the subject of heated debate and litigation. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, one of the country’s leading preservation organizations, has taken the position that the Constitution gives Congress the power to manage federal lands, and while Congress delegated to the president the authority to establish monuments that protect places, structures, and objects with historic or scientific relevance, only Congress retains the power to undo those protections.
Earthjustice attorney Thomas Delehanty stated plainly in a July 2026 statement to Newsweek: “The Antiquities Act gives the president authority to designate national monuments but not to revoke or shrink them. Only Congress has the power to do that.” His organization pledged to challenge the proclamations in court.
Supporters of the reductions cite the law’s own language back at critics. Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who attended the Oval Office signing, argued that monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area possible to protect the antiquities, and multi-million-acre monuments bigger than the state of Delaware don’t fit that designation. The White House framing echoed that position, stating that the proclamations reduce the monuments to “appropriate sizes that allow for common sense land use in these areas.”
The Supreme Court may eventually settle the dispute. The litigation over Bears Ears and Grand Staircase could eventually reach the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice John Roberts has suggested that the Antiquities Act is ripe for review. In a 2021 opinion, Roberts wrote that any land reserved under the act must be limited to the smallest area compatible with proper management, but that “somewhere along the line, however, this restriction has ceased to pose any meaningful restraint.”
What’s at Stake Beyond the Boundary Lines
The practical consequences of the 2026 reductions extend well beyond Utah’s canyon country. Sixty days after the order was signed, the lands removed from the monuments become eligible for mineral leasing, mining claims, and other public land uses. Uranium mining is considered one of the more realistic extraction prospects in the region.
For the tribes whose ancestors’ footprints mark virtually every square mile of Bears Ears, the reductions carry a different kind of weight. Anthony Sanchez Jr., the head council member for the Pueblo of Zuni and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, described a feeling of whiplash: “You have an administration that backs you up, and then you’re back to square one again.” The Biden administration had reached a formal co-stewardship arrangement with the five tribes, giving them a shared role in managing the monument alongside federal agencies. The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Commission – the body of tribal representatives established to help guide the monument’s management – was also terminated by Trump’s July 13 order.
The Antiquities Act has been amended twice – in 1950 and 1980 – as a result of state and congressional anger over the establishment of national monuments in Wyoming and Alaska. Those amendments require that any new monument in Wyoming and any monument of more than 5,000 acres in Alaska first receive congressional approval. Similar restrictions have been proposed for other states, and the current dispute may intensify that legislative push.
Many of the plaintiffs from the 2017 lawsuits have signaled they intend to resume their suits against the administration. Earthjustice confirmed it plans to file its lawsuit within weeks of the July 13 proclamations. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has similarly pledged to sue. The central constitutional question about presidential authority over national monuments – unresolved since 2017 – now has its most consequential test case yet.
What This Means for You
The Antiquities Act dispute matters for anyone who uses or cares about America’s public lands, because its outcome will set a precedent for every monument currently on the map. The legal fight could have far-reaching implications for the future of land conservation, potentially putting dozens of other monuments at risk. If courts ultimately rule that presidents can freely shrink or revoke monuments created by predecessors, no protected area designated by executive proclamation can be considered permanent.
Before becoming beloved national parks, Acadia, Olympic, Zion, and the Grand Canyon were each first designated as national monuments under the Antiquities Act. The law’s century-long track record of protecting land that later generations came to treasure is the strongest argument its defenders have. But that argument has yet to be tested in a Supreme Court with the current legal landscape in mind.
What Happens Next
The most concrete thing to watch now is the courts. Earthjustice, the Native American Rights Fund, and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance have all signaled imminent legal filings. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which returned a related Utah lawsuit to the district court just weeks before the July 13 proclamations, is already in the middle of the broader fight over whether Biden’s 2021 restoration of the monuments was itself lawful.
The question of whether the Antiquities Act functions as a one-way ratchet – presidents can protect, but cannot unprotect – is almost certainly headed to the nation’s highest court. A ruling in either direction will reshape how every future administration can use, or undo, one of America’s most powerful conservation tools. For the tribes, the conservationists, and the millions of people who visit and treasure these landscapes each year, the outcome of that legal fight will determine whether a monument designation means anything at all.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.