Utah Gov. Spencer Cox recently asserted that Chief Justice John Roberts cast grave doubt on President Biden’s authority to use the Antiquities Act to protect large areas of public lands in the Grand Staircase and Bears Ears areas of southern Utah (“Chief Justice Offers Encouragement for Monument Reform,” Tribune, April 13).
Cox was referring to a memorandum Roberts filed last month when the court unanimously refused to hear a challenge to a lower court ruling upholding presidential establishment of a 3.2 million acre national monument off the Massachusetts coast...