Case No. 2:08cv00064, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and Natural Resources Defense Council, vs. Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior, United States District Court, District of Utah, Central Division, January 23, 2008.
“This suit challenges the decisions by the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of the Interior, and Secretary of the Department of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne (collectively referred to as BLM) authorizing the sale of 60 oil and gas leases that allow surface occupancy on tens of thousands of acres of BLM managed lands in Utah at three lease sales held between February 2004 and May 2005. Each of these three sales presents the identical legal and factual issues recently addressed by the court in Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Norton (SUWA), 457 F. Supp. 2d 1253 (D. Utah 2006) whether BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it sold oil and gas leases on lands recognized by the agency as having or likely possessing wilderness character and when it sold oil and gas leases without adequate pre-leasing analysis.”
