June 13, 2025 –Armed with a new legal directive arguing that presidents have the power to abolish national monuments created by their White House predecessors, President Donald Trump is expected to move to eradicate or shrink sites — and trigger a legal fight that could find its way to the Supreme Court.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) published an opinion Tuesday overturning nearly 90-year-old guidance that said presidents could not revoke national monument status.
Lanora Pettit, who serves as deputy assistant attorney general, wrote that the Antiquities Act of 1906 not only allows the president to set aside existing public lands to protect areas of cultural, historical or scientific interest, but also grants the power to rescind existing sites that “either never were or no longer are deserving of the Act’s protections.”
That opinion — which serves as legal advice to the executive branch, rather than a binding court ruling — could set the stage for a fresh legal battle over the 119-year-old law. Critics of the Antiquities Act have urged Trump to take the fight to the nation’s highest court and ensure the law is curtailed. The administration has been taking a look at monuments that could be targeted, focused on sites with the potential for mineral extraction.
“It’s quite obvious this opinion was done to try and justify something they plan to do going forward,” said Mark Squillace, the Raphael J. Moses professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado Law School.
“That’s not to say the court might not agree with the opinion,” he added. “The court may be inclined to try and pull back on the Antiquities Act.”
Debate over the Antiquities Act tends to divide along political lines, with Republicans and other critics arguing that Democratic presidents have abused the law to set aside sprawling swaths of land that could otherwise be open to extractive industries, grazing or other uses.
Opponents have long seized on language in the law that requires a monument to “be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
But proponents point to decades of legal precedent supporting presidential prerogative to create monuments of any size, which dates back to President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 creation of what was then the 800,000-acre Grand Canyon National Monument.
The first Trump administration made clear it aligned with critics, initiating a massive review of monuments created since 1996 under then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.