Supreme Court Won’t Hear Challenges to President’s Power to Create National Monuments

Two conservative justices dissented in the ruling that affects land in Oregon and California.

Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh attend the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol Building, on February 5, 2019. Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images

The Supreme Court declined to take up two lawsuits challenging the ability of the U.S. president to declare federal lands to be national monuments.

The nation’s highest court denied the petitions for certiorari, or review, on March 25, in the cases of Murphy Company v. Biden and American Forest Resource Council v. United States, in an unsigned order. The court did not explain the decisions.