Judicial Review Is Available for Antiquities Act Monument Proclamations When Plaintiffs Allege the President Exceeded Discernible Statutory Limits

1. Introduction

Case: Garfield County, Utah v. Trump (substituting President Trump for President Biden under Fed. R. App. P. 43(c)(2)).
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Date: June 23, 2026.
Panel: CARSON, ROSSMAN, and FEDERICO, Circuit Judges (FEDERICO dissenting).

The appeal arose from President Biden’s 2021 proclamations expanding two Utah national monuments—Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears—under the Antiquities Act, 54 U.S.C. § 320301. Utah, two counties, and other plaintiffs alleged the expansions exceeded statutory limits because (i) many designated “objects” were not “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest,” and (ii) the acreage reserved was not “confined to the smallest area compatible” with protecting the identified objects.

The district court dismissed on sovereign-immunity and other justiciability grounds, also dismissing some plaintiffs for lack of standing and rejecting APA review of interim management plans as not “final agency action.” The Tenth Circuit’s principal task was to define the judiciary’s role when plaintiffs allege the President crossed statutory boundaries in a monument proclamation.

2. Summary of the Opinion

  • Ultra vires / sovereign immunity: The court held the district court applied an overly restrictive view of the ultra vires exception to sovereign immunity. Where a statute (here, the Antiquities Act) “places discernible limits” on presidential authority, courts may review claims that the President exceeded those statutory limits. The case was remanded for the district court to interpret the Act’s limits and determine whether plaintiffs plausibly alleged ultra vires action.
  • APA claims: Because BLM adopted final resource management plans superseding the challenged interim plans, the court vacated the dismissal of APA claims and remanded for the district court to address the effect of the final plans.
  • Standing: The Individual Plaintiffs and BlueRibbon’s standing arguments were deemed waived because not raised in the opening brief; their dismissal was affirmed. The court also rejected defendants’ renewed challenge to the Utah Plaintiffs’ standing.
  • Form of dismissal: Jurisdictional dismissals must be without prejudice; the court modified the district court’s order accordingly (citing Brereton v. Bountiful City Corp.).

3. Analysis

3.1. Precedents Cited

A. Sovereign immunity and the ultra vires exception

The majority framed the dispute through foundational sovereign-immunity doctrine:

  • Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Cmty. and Dep't of Agric. Rural Dev. Rural Hous. Serv. v. Kirtz were cited for the baseline rule that the sovereign is immune absent consent.
  • Wyoming v. United States (relying on Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp. v. Meyer) supplied the Tenth Circuit’s formulation that sovereign immunity extends to officers acting on the sovereign’s behalf.
  • Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman underscored that executive power is bounded by statute and Constitution.
  • Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Com. Corp. provided the controlling distinction: suing an officer is permissible only if the officer acted outside statutory power (ultra vires) or unconstitutionally; alleging illegality within delegated power is not enough.
  • The majority also cited United Tribe of Shawnee Indians v. United States to emphasize that the plaintiff must allege the officer was not exercising delegated sovereign power.

Using this framework, the majority faulted the district court for requiring plaintiffs to allege the President lacked authority to designate monuments “as a general matter,” rather than alleging he exceeded specific statutory limits (e.g., designating non-qualifying “objects” or reserving more than the “smallest area compatible”). To illustrate the error, the court invoked Chambers of Com. of U.S. v. Reich, warning against a regime in which there are “no judicially enforceable limitations” so long as the President invokes some statutory label.

B. Reviewability and “discretion”

Defendants argued that review is barred because monument determinations are committed to presidential discretion. The majority drew on classic “committed to discretion” cases, but distinguished them:

  • Dalton v. Specter: no judicial review where a statute places no legal limits—there was “nothing” preventing the President from approving base-closure recommendations “for whatever reason he saw fit.”
  • United States v. George S. Bush & Co., Martin v. Mott, and Dakota Cent. Tel. Co. v. State of S. Dakota ex rel. Payne: where Congress or the Constitution commits a determination to the President’s judgment, courts do not “second-guess” it.

The majority held those authorities do not control when “discernible limits” constrain discretion. It relied heavily on Mountain States Legal Found. v. Bush (D.C. Circuit) for the proposition that Dalton’s bar does not apply where statutory limits exist, and it cited Murphy Co. v. Biden (Ninth Circuit) as consistent authority. The court expressly “join[ed]” the D.C. and Ninth Circuits on two points: (i) statutory limits (whether in the authorizing statute or elsewhere) can make presidential action reviewable; and (ii) ultra vires review is not confined to constitutional challenges (rejecting the district court’s contrary view).

C. The Antiquities Act specifically, and Supreme Court treatment

The majority stressed that courts can interpret the Antiquities Act’s terms and have done so, citing:

  • Cameron v. United States (Grand Canyon “is an object of unusual scientific interest”);
  • Cappaert v. United States (a pool could be an “object[] of historic or scientific interest”);
  • United States v. California (Antiquities Act implicated in monument-related disputes);
  • Mass. Lobstermen's Ass'n v. Ross (district court example of judicial interpretation in context).

While these cases did not arise in the same sovereign-immunity posture, the majority used them to rebut the district court’s and defendants’ categorical view that monument designations are inherently insulated from legal scrutiny.

D. Ambiguity, interpretation, and post-Chevron separation-of-powers framing

The opinion’s interpretive posture was shaped by Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, invoking the judiciary’s duty to “say what the law is” (quoting Marbury v. Madison) and rejecting the notion that ambiguity alone delegates law-interpreting power to the President. The court also cited Kucana v. Holder for the presumption favoring judicial review absent “clear and convincing evidence” to the contrary.

E. Remedies and the President

The court flagged (without resolving) remedial complexities: it noted that neither the Supreme Court nor the Tenth Circuit has “ever found an injunction may issue in an ultra vires action against the President for actions taken not in accordance with a statute,” suggesting any effective relief might need to run against agency officials implementing the proclamations. This observation interacts with the APA’s inapplicability to the President (citing Franklin v. Massachusetts and Bradford v. U.S. Dep't of Lab.).

F. The “high bar” debate: Kyne vs. traditional ultra vires

The district court suggested (and defendants argued) that ultra vires requires a “plain” transgression. The majority discussed: Fed. Express Corp. v. U.S. Dep't of Com., Apter v. Dep't of Health & Hum. Servs., Danos v. Jones, and Nuclear Regul. Comm'n v. Texas, which characterizes certain ultra vires theories as a “Hail Mary pass.” But the majority distinguished Leedom v. Kyne and Boire v. Greyhound Corp. as addressing a narrow, post-APA, end-run context, and left open whether a Kyne-like standard applies to these presidential challenges.

G. Other cited authorities relevant on remand

  • Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer and Am. Fed'n of Lab. & Cong. of Indus. Orgs. v. Kahn: presidential power must stem from statute or Constitution and be exercised consistently with statutory structure and purpose.
  • Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Ctr., Inc. and Safe Streets All. v. Hickenlooper: the majority distinguished equitable ultra vires relief from Supremacy-Clause “equity” claims rejected in Safe Streets.
  • Standing and waiver: In re: Motor Fuel Temperature Sales Pracs. Litig. and M.D. Mark, Inc. v. Kerr-McGee Corp. (arguments first raised in reply are waived), and standard standing cases including Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife and Wyoming ex rel. Crank v. United States.

3.2. Legal Reasoning

A. The core holding: statutory limits create a judicially enforceable boundary

The majority’s central move was to separate (1) discretion within statutory boundaries from (2) actions beyond the boundary. It held that plaintiffs can invoke the ultra vires exception by alleging the President acted outside the Antiquities Act’s two textual constraints:

  1. Subject-matter constraint (what may be protected): only “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest.”
  2. Size constraint (how much land may be reserved): parcels “shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

The district court erred, in the majority’s view, by recharacterizing the complaint as merely alleging misuse of authority, rather than alleging that the President designated non-qualifying “objects” and reserved non-minimal acreage—i.e., exercised power Congress never granted.

B. Parsing “in the President’s discretion”

The majority emphasized statutory structure: the “discretion” clause appears in subsection (a) modifying the act of declaring monuments, not as a global shield against interpretation of the statute’s defined categories; and subsection (b)’s “smallest area compatible” command uses “shall” and does not include a discretion clause. It rejected the idea that broad terms (e.g., “objects,” “compatible”) automatically commit their legal meaning to presidential judgment; courts interpret those terms using ordinary tools of construction, consistent with Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo.

C. What the court did not decide

The court did not decide whether the proclamations actually violate the Antiquities Act. Instead, it remanded for the district court to interpret the Act’s limits and then decide whether plaintiffs plausibly alleged that the President acted outside those limits, and whether any heightened Kyne-style threshold applies.

D. Dissent’s competing theory

Judge FEDERICO agreed the district court overstated presidential immunity, but argued the majority authorized an impermissibly “expansive” review. Relying heavily on Nuclear Regulatory Comm'n v. Texas and Dalton v. Specter, the dissent would confine ultra vires review to facial, prohibition-like violations (e.g., non-federal land, failure to invoke the Act, violation of another statute, or the Wyoming-specific restriction in § 320301(d)), and would treat the “objects” and “smallest area compatible” determinations as discretionary merits questions insulated by sovereign immunity.

3.3. Impact

The decision’s practical and doctrinal significance lies less in monument outcomes (still undecided) and more in justiciability architecture:

  • Opening a courthouse door (narrowly): The Tenth Circuit aligned itself with the D.C. and Ninth Circuits’ approach that presidential actions are reviewable when statutes provide “discernible limits,” rejecting categorical nonreviewability arguments grounded in “discretion.”
  • Reframing Antiquities Act litigation: Monument challenges in the Tenth Circuit can proceed past sovereign immunity where plaintiffs plead that the proclamation crossed statutory boundaries—especially disputes over what counts as an “object” and what counts as the “smallest area compatible.”
  • Post-Loper Bright interpretive confidence: The opinion leverages the judiciary’s renewed emphasis on independent statutory interpretation, signaling reduced tolerance for arguments that ambiguity itself forecloses review.
  • Remedy uncertainty remains: Even if plaintiffs eventually show ultra vires action, the court highlighted unresolved questions about whether relief can run directly against the President or must run against implementing agencies.
  • APA litigation reset: By vacating the interim-plan APA dismissal due to superseding final plans, the court underscored how agency planning cycles can moot or reshape APA theories mid-appeal.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

Sovereign immunity
The rule that the United States (and officers acting for it) generally cannot be sued unless Congress allows it.
Ultra vires
Literally “beyond the powers.” In this context, it means a federal officer—including the President—acted outside the authority Congress granted, so the act is not treated as the sovereign’s act for immunity purposes (as described in Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Com. Corp. and applied through Wyoming v. United States).
“Committed to discretion” / nonreviewability
Some statutes give the President such open-ended judgment that courts have no legal standard to apply (as in Dalton v. Specter). The majority held the Antiquities Act is different because it contains textual limits (“objects” categories; “smallest area compatible”).
Final agency action (APA)
Under the APA, courts typically review only agency actions that mark the consummation of the agency’s decisionmaking and have legal consequences. Here, interim plans were overtaken by final resource management plans, requiring reconsideration of what remains to review.
Standing and waiver
Standing requires a concrete injury traceable to the defendant and redressable by the court. Waiver here meant the Individual Plaintiffs and BlueRibbon lost appellate review of standing by not properly raising it in their opening brief.

5. Conclusion

Garfield County, Utah v. Trump establishes an important Tenth Circuit rule of judicial role: when Congress sets “discernible limits” on presidential discretion—as the Antiquities Act does—federal courts may entertain ultra vires challenges alleging the President exceeded those statutory limits, and sovereign immunity does not categorically foreclose review. The court did not decide whether the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase expansions were lawful; it required the district court to interpret the Antiquities Act’s limiting terms and assess plausibility (and any heightened ultra vires threshold) on remand. Separately, the opinion resets the APA portion of the case due to superseding final plans and tightens appellate practice by enforcing waiver principles on standing arguments.