Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, et al. v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance et al. (542 U.S. 55)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 14, 2004 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 542 U.S. 55 · 124 S. Ct. 2373
- Decided
- June 14, 2004
- Term
- October Term 2003
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Scalia
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case, we must decide whether the authority of a federal court under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to “compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed,” 5 U. S. C. § 706(1), extends to the review of the United States Bureau of Land Management’s stewardship of public lands under certain statutory provisions and its own planning documents. I Almost half the State of Utah, about 23 million acres, is federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency within the Department of Interior. For nearly 30 years, BLM’s management of public lands has been governed by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), 90 Stat. 2744, 43 U. S. C. § 1701 et seq., which “established a policy in favor of retaining public lands for multiple use management.” Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U. S. 871, 877 (1990). “Multiple use management” is a deceptively simple term that describes the enormously complicated task of striking a balance among the many competing uses to which land can be put, “including, but not limited to, recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and [uses serving] natural scenic, scientific and historical values.” 43 U. S. C. § 1702(c). A second management goal, “sustained yield,” requires BLM to control depleting uses over time,…
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