Patagonia backs legal challenge to Trump's Utah monument cuts

Patagonia has joined a coalition of Native American and environmental groups in reopening lawsuits against the Trump administration's executive orders that shrink Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by over 90 percent. The retailer argues the reductions are illegal, betray tribal sovereignty, and open protected lands to oil and uranium extraction. The company says the orders violate the Antiquities Act and prior protections.

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The lawsuits being revived trace back to 2017, when Trump's first administration issued similar reductions that were later reversed by Biden in October 2021. The new July orders again shrink both monuments by more than 90 percent, reopening vast acreage to oil drilling, uranium mining, and other commercial development. Patagonia's legal argument centers on the 1906 Antiquities Act, signed by Theodore Roosevelt, and notes that Bears Ears was specifically identified in that act's legislative history for its Indigenous archaeological and cultural significance.

Both monuments are co-stewarded by intertribal coalitions that include the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and