By Chris Bennett April 30, 2024
How much acreage can a president take with the stroke of a pen? 10 million acres? 500 million acres? More?
The answer, says sixth-generation rancher Chris Heaton, is not a single acre beyond the law. Heaton’s livestock operation is at risk from the federal government’s latest land appropriation—a near million-acre claim by President Biden via the Antiquities Act through creation of the Ancestral Footprints National Monument.
Contending abuse of presidential authority, Heaton, in the crosshairs of potential fines and imprisonment for everyday activity on his ranch, has filed a federal lawsuit against Biden.
“My forefathers built this ranch and I’m not going to lose it on my watch,” Heaton says. “I’ll do this the proper way in the courts, and if Biden wants a fight, then he’s going to get one.”
A Weapon
In August 2023, Biden issued a proclamation turning 917,618 federal acres in northern Arizona into the Ancestral Footprints National Monument by wielding the power of the Antiquities Act, a law intended for the protection of archeological sites or landmarks and their immediate, surrounding acreage.
Biden dropped a blanket of government regulation on every inch of the Monument, an area 150,000 acres larger than Yosemite, and 75,000 acres bigger than the Grand Teton National Park and Great Smoky Mountains Park put together. Biden’s proclamation covers landscapes, species, and objects—named and unnamed—within all 917,618 acres, including plateaus, canyons, tributaries, remnants of homes, storage buildings, pottery, tools, other physical remnants of human habitation, 50 species of plants, groundwaters that flow into the Colorado River, geological features, cliffs, faults, deserts, grasslands, woodlands, forests, riparian vegetation, and a variety of endangered species.
“Normal ranching is now gone here, and that’s what my family has practiced for decades,” Heaton insists. “Overnight, we’re not allowed to disrupt or destroy objects, both known and unknown, on the Monument. We literally don’t know all the objects because some are listed and some are not, yet they have associated criminal penalties. This is like putting someone in a game and expecting them to play by the rules—without telling them the rules.”
On a mix of private land and acres leased from Arizona and the Bureau of Land Management, Heaton, 37, runs cattle on 48,603 acres now overlapped by the Monument. He has three federal grazing permits and 47 private water rights.
Every day of the year, Heaton’s 200 cow pairs are on land designated for the Monument. In daily rhythm, Heaton and his family tend livestock, clean water holes, cut overgrowth, remove silt, mend fences, drop minerals, chop ice, repair roads, and a host of other standard production practices—all now in jeopardy.
In February 2024, represented by Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), Heaton filed suit against Biden; Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack; Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland; and Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning.
(DOJ, USDA, DOI, and BLM all declined Farm Journal requests for comment on Chris Heaton’s suit.)
“We’re asking a federal court to check Biden’s executive overreach,” says PLF attorney Adam Griffin. “Biden has taken 1 million acres and said a ‘landscape’ is an object and everything on it is an object. Look at the absurdity: The entire landscape Chris Heaton is on is now a national monument. How does a landscape become an object? I’ve never heard anyone in my life look at a landscape and say, ‘That’s a beautiful object.’”
PLF attorney Frank Garrison says the Biden administration is making “law through proclamation.”
“Only Congress can pass such laws—not the president. Biden is using a work-around to pass regulations that could never get through Congress, and the impact hits people who rely on natural resources to make a living,” Garrison notes. “Chris Heaton is in compliance with all land use statutes, but suddenly the government can turn him into a criminal over his everyday ranching activities.”
“If anyone wants a clear picture of how government power expands to all-powerful levels,” Griffin echoes, “look no further than what has become a weapon in the hands of the president—the Antiquities Act.”
“Does The Law Not Matter?”
In 1906, at the urging of Theodore Roosevelt, Congress passed the Antiquities Act. Contained on a single page, a mere 441 words authorized the president to “declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments…”
Congress approved the Antiquities Act to allow a president to protect specific locations in tight crosshairs, evidenced by congressional debate on whether monuments should be limited between 320 to 640 acres. (Congress kept the power to create big-acreage national parks to itself, having started with the establishment of Yellowstone in 1872.)
At passage of the Antiquities Act, the text allowed a president to “reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected…”
Over the next 120 years, the “smallest area” ballooned to millions of acres, and “objects” expanded to ecosystems. Since 1906, successive presidents have used the Antiquities Act to cordon off staggering swathes of land—roughly 800 million acres in total.
Turns out, the race for land in U.S. history never ended, with Uncle Sam still leading the scramble—never mind the law or Constitution. In recent decades, multiple presidents have vastly increased acreage claims for national monuments. Jimmy Carter; 55 million acres. Bill Clinton; 5 million acres. George W. Bush; 215 million acres. Barak Obama; 554 million acres (mainly via two marine monuments).
“They act as if there is no limiting principle,” Garrison says, “but that’s not how our Constitution works. What next? If a president can designate species, landscapes, ecosystems, and amorphous concepts like objects, then how much land can a president rope off next? The entire West?”
Heaton, via his lawsuit, asks glaring questions: “Does the law not matter? Does the will of the people not matter? Do the reps, senators, state legislators, county boards, and resolutions not matter? One president gets total control and the people and elected officials mean nothing?”
Ranching, Mining, Logging?
Heaton’s Y-Cross Ranch is 40 miles north of the Grand Canyon. He has worked the land, once in the shadows of his father and grandfather, since the age of 8. “My family ranched here before BLM existed. We take care of the land, pay grazing fees, and get nothing for free. There are national monuments with millions of acres all around us in Arizona and Utah, but if you talk to people in coffee shops, grocery stores, or regular folks on the street, you find out that our local economies are strangled because the government forces our area to be dependent on tourism.”
“Ranching, mining, or logging—the government wants to control all of it or shut it down,” Heaton says. “That’s why presidents in the past, and Biden now, are willing to ignore the law. My ranch and many, many other producers are in the crosshairs of his control.”
(Northern Arizona is estimated to have at least 2.6 billion pounds of uranium. In 2022, 95% of uranium needed by U.S. nuclear power plants was imported from foreign countries, including Russia.)
“Special interest groups turned to the president to get this land under federal control because they knew it couldn’t be done legitimately through congress,” concurs PLF attorney Adam Griffin. “However, before this much federal land is locked up, the process should go to the people through their reps in Congress. It shouldn’t be, and wasn’t intended to be, up to a single individual.
Whose Wishes?
Will Heaton’s lawsuit, or a similar case, eventually land before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)?
In 2021, SCOTUS declined to hear Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association v. Raimondo, an Antiquities Act-related case triggered when Obama declared 5,000 square miles of ocean to be a national monument and banned all fishing, but Chief Justice John Roberts expressed concern in a four-page statement:
While the Executive enjoys far greater flexibility in setting aside a monument under the Antiquities Act, that flexibility, as mentioned, carries with it a unique constraint: Any land reserved under the Act must be limited to the smallest area compatible with the care and management of the objects to be protected. Somewhere along the line, however, this restriction has ceased to pose any meaningful restraint. A statute permitting the President in his sole discretion to designate as monuments “land- marks,” “structures,” and “objects”—along with the smallest area of land compatible with their management—has been transformed into a power without any discernible limit to set aside vast and amorphous expanses of terrain above and below the sea.
The Antiquities Act began as a simple measure to protect the past: When the legislative branch via Congress put the ball in motion, the executive branch via the president took the ball and ran. Heaton contends the president has run beyond the Constitution.
“I’m suing because Biden assumes he has power to affect the livelihoods of so many people in agriculture and other industries with a baseless declaration,” Heaton concludes. “He wants to act according to his own wishes, but I’m demanding he act according to the law.”
For more articles from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
- Power vs. Privacy: Landowner Sues Game Wardens, Challenges Property Intrusion
- Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
- American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed In Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud
- Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic
- Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
- Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
- Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years
- While America Slept, China Stole the Farm
