The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to allow timber production to resume in portions of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon/BLM file

More than two dozen Republican senators and congressmen have filed an amicus curiae brief siding with parties that have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court in a bid to restrict a president's use of the Antiquities Act to set aside federal lands as national monuments.

The brief, filed in a case challenging President Obama's expansion in 2017 of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon, argues that "[T]he Constitution vests Congress, not the President, with authority to regulate federal lands."

The filing, in support of an appeal brought by the American Forest Resource Council and 15 Oregon counties, claims Obama exceeded his authority under the Antiquities Act by, in effect, taking out of timber production some 48,000 acres he added to the national monument.

"Because timber production is not allowed within that monument, the sustained yield harvesting that had been occurring there for decades was stopped," reads the filing, which was submitted December 18. "The problem with the President’s stopping timber production on these lands is that Congress had already designated them for 'permanent forest production' in another act. And no matter how much power the President may think the Antiquities Act gives him, it cannot give him the power to override another, later, and more specific act of Congress. Nor can the President get around Congress’s permanent forest production mandate by redefining which lands are subject to that mandate."

The monument, established in 2000 by President Bill Clinton, encompasses the "convergence of three geologically distinct mountain ranges [that] has resulted in an area with unparalleled biological diversity and a tremendously varied landscape," according to the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the monument.

Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is home to a wide variety of animals including deer, bears, mountain lions, small mammals and songbirds. Eagles and other raptors are also a draw for birdwatchers. Hiking, wildlife viewing, fishing, hunting, scenic drives, skiing, snowmobiling and sledding are popular activities at Cascade-Siskiyou. The elevation ranges from 2,100 to 6,100 feet. -- BLM

Presidential use of the Antiquities Act in recent years has spurred a number of lawsuits, from both sides of the political aisle. After Obama established Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, President Donald Trump issued an executive order reducing both it and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by roughly 2 million acres, combined. That move prompted lawsuits from conservationists and later led President Biden to reverse his predecessor's order.

Utah officials went to court in a bid to reverse Biden's action, but a federal judge this past summer ruled that the state had no legal standing to challenge Biden's decision.

"It has long been held that where Congress has authorized a public officer to take some specified legislative action when in his judgment that action is necessary or appropriate to carry out the policy of Congress, the judgment of the officer as to the existence of the facts calling for that action is not subject to review," Judge David Nuffer wrote in that ruling. "President Biden’s judgment in drafting and issuing the Proclamations as he sees fit is not an action reviewable by a district court."

The amicus brief filed last week argues that some of the federal lands now within the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument were set aside specifically for timber production and protected as such under the Oregon and California Railroad and Coos Bay Wagon Road Grant Lands Act that Congress passed in 1937 to dictate that the lands "must be managed ... for permanent forest production" so as to provide a revenue stream for surrounding counties as well as to "protect watersheds, regulate stream flow, and provide recreational facilities."

The act, referred as the O&C Act, "directs the executive branch to calculate the 'annual productive capacity' for these timberlands and then to sell that amount of timber 'at reasonable prices,'" the filing says. "Proceeds from those sales, the Act specifies, must be 'distributed annually' to the counties where the timber is located. And so they have been, for nearly ninety years. Congress has not changed the O&C Act’s instructions to the executive branch. But in 2017, the executive branch stopped applying the O&C Act’s timber production mandate on more than 10,000 acres of O&C timberlands."

While earlier efforts to overturn the monument's expansion failed in both the Ninth Circuit and D.C. Circuit Courts of Appeals, the amicus brief maintains those courts reached faulty decisions because the courts' majorities "ignored a basic 'conflict' between the O&C Act’s 'permanent forest production' mandate and the executive’s use of the Antiquities Act to stop forest production."

"... Interpreting the Antiquities Act to allow the President to override land-management mandates imposed by Congress would give the President plenary power to decide how federal lands are managed. The Constitution expressly commits such power to Congress, not the President," the filing argues.

At the American Forest Resource Council, President President, Travis Joseph said that, “[W]e are building support nationally because many Americans and their elected representatives are concerned about the implications of presidents having unfettered authority to indefinitely suspend or cancel the operation of federal laws through the Antiquities Act proclamations and other executive actions.

Traveler footnote: Here's a list of the senators and representatives who have signed the amicus brief.

Representative Cliff Bentz of Oregon

Representative Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania

Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania

Representative Ken Buck of Colorado

Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, M.D. of Iowa

Representative Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee

Representative Doug Lamborn of Colorado

Representative Harriet M. Hageman of Wyoming

Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona

Representative John Rose of Tennessee

Representative Bruce Westerman of Arkansas

Representative Thomas Tiffany of Wisconsin

Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado

Representative Matthew Rosendale of Montana

Representative Douglas LaMalfa of California

Representative Dan Newhouse of Washington

Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington

Representative Pete Stauber of Minnesota

Representative Tom McClintock of California

Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon

Representative Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin 3

Representative Ryan Zinke of Montana

Representative Ben Cline of Virginia

Representative Ken Calvert of California

Representative Eli Crane of Arizona

Representative Russ Fulcher of Idaho

Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho

Senator Steven Daines of Montana

Senator James Risch of Idaho