BCLP Team Highlighted by ‘Law360’ over Offshore Monument Designation

An amicus brief filed by a BCLP team was featured Sept. 1 in Law360 as industry groups and local governments push the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether an American president can create offshore national monuments under the Antiquities Act, and what the act’s “smallest area” requirement means with respect to the president’s proclamations. While the industry groups focused on whether President Barack Obama could create the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean because the ocean is not “land,” the BCLP team advocated for several local government and legislative entities in Utah on the issue of whether the lower court could write the “smallest area” requirement out of the act. St. Louis Partner Barbara Smith, St. Louis Associate Steven Alagna and Denver Associate Ivan London were noted for BCLP’s representation of several Utah counties and state-level legislators in this matter. In their brief, the counties and legislators argue that monuments must be the “smallest area compatible with the proper care ... of the objects to be protected,” and that lower courts have not been enforcing that limit on executive power.