Oregon Rep. Bentz leads brief to question presidents’ authority over public lands
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PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Republican Oregon Rep. Cliff Bentz is leading a coalition of lawmakers who want to challenge the president’s authority over public lands.
On Tuesday, the congressman announced he had officially filed an amicus brief that directs the U.S. Supreme Court to review American Forest Resource Council v. United States of America and Murphy Company v. Biden.
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In Bentz’s statement, he upheld much of what the two plaintiffs said in their original cases: the presidents — first Barack Obama and now Joe Biden — acted outside of their duties by allowing the expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.
Obama expanded the landscape shortly before his final term ended in January 2017. His administration said the expansion would “maintain [the monument’s] diverse array of natural and scientific resources and preserve its cultural and historic legacy.”
However, Bentz and other coalition members argue the former president misused the Antiquities Act of 1906 and violated the Oregon and California Railroad and Coos Bay Wagon Road Grant Lands Act of 1937.
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The Antiquities Act protects cultural and natural resources on federal land that have historic or scientific interest, while Congress passed the O&C Act to allow timber harvesting on many acres of land in Oregon.
According to the recent amicus brief, the expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument ceased yield harvesting in certain areas, affecting loggers and “forest-dependent communities.”
“The President’s job is not to make law, but to enforce them,” Bentz said in a statement. “Yet, in recent years, Presidents have increasingly usurped congressional authority… In this brief we urge the Supreme Court to hear these cases and to make it clear that the President cannot circumvent Congress by rewriting our nation’s public land laws with the stroke of a pen.”
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Fellow Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez–DeRemer co-signed the congressman’s brief, along with Washington Reps. Dan Newhouse and Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
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