The Elko County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday unanimously approved a resolution supporting Utah in its quest to acquire more than 18 million acres of federally held public land.

In a federal lawsuit filed in August by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Attorney General Sean Reyes, Utah asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the federal government can indefinitely hold unappropriated lands — land that is not managed as a national park, forest, conservation area or otherwise protected — within states, an issue that spans multiple Western states.

The lawsuit seeks to convert control of roughly 18.5 million acres of unappropriated land back to state management.

Currently, only an act of Congress can transfer federal land to a state.

The Elko County Commission is the first Nevada governing body to formally weigh in on the lawsuit, with commissioners feeling optimistic about Utah’s chances under a conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court. 

If the court decides to hear the matter, it could have big implications for Nevada, where more than 85 percent of the state’s land is managed by the federal government. That federal land cannot be easily released into state control.

In Utah, nearly 70 percent of the state’s 54.3 million acres is managed by the federal government; Utah has the second-largest percentage of federally owned land in the nation. Only Nevada has more. 

Nevada has some access to its federal land — in 1998, Congress approved the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, which drew a boundary around the Las Vegas Valley, identifying public land to be sold at auction to private bidders. Profits from the sales remain in Nevada. 

But that access is limited, an issue that has been raised by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.

In 2023, he joined other Western Republican governors in opposing the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule], which places conservation on equal footing with industry and resource extraction on federally managed land. 

And earlier this year, he sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking him to streamline the process of making federal land available for housing development.

Concerns regarding access to public land were reflected by the Elko County commissioners. 

“The Western states have not been treated the same as the Eastern states,” Elko County Commissioner Travis Gerber said. “Clearly the Constitution directed that Congress dispose of lands … and that’s the part the prior decisions have ignored — that word ‘disposed.’” 

State versus federal ownership

Present-day Nevada and Utah are part of a chunk of land acquired through the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War and transferred a vast swath of land to the United States.

As the federal government divided the land into states in the mid to late 1800s, Congress delineated how much land the states could have for development of schools, prisons and other public facilities. 

But, as John Ruple, a law professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law told KUER, “There was no state land until the federal government created a state.

“So when we hear people talk about Utah taking back land, it doesn't make a whole lot of historical sense, because Utah didn't own that land prior to federal acquisition.”

In 2015, Nevada’s Senate passed a resolution asking Congress to convey more than 7 million acres of federal land to the state. That resolution drew the backing of Republican lawmakers such as then-Gov. Brian Sandoval and former U.S. Sen. Dean Heller.

Utah’s request is being backed by more than a dozen states, including Arizona, Alaska, Wyoming and Idaho. Multiple Eastern and central states with little national public land such as Alabama and Mississippi are also backing the state.

The lawsuit has also drawn opposition, with various groups speaking against it — hunters say it could be bad for sportsmen and wildlife, while conservationists worry it could lead to increased resource extraction, development and destruction of habitat.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet decided if it will hear the case.

Gerber, the Elko commissioner, said that with former President Donald Trump taking a second term in office and a conservative U.S. Supreme Court that recently voted to overturn the Chevron doctrine, a long-standing precedent that granted federal agencies power to interpret laws they administer, it is likely the court “will take a very serious look” at the lawsuit. 

The Elko resolution includes a $2,000 donation to support Utah’s effort.