By Taylor Stevens | Salt Lake City Tribune
A group of 21 mayors and council members from around Utah have signed onto briefs with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in support of lawsuits filed against President Donald Trump’s shrinking of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
The amicus friend-of-the-court briefs — filed Monday and drafted by the Harvard Law School’s Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic and the Salt Lake City Attorney’s Office — contend that the process was flawed, with little input from local voices, and that the boundary reduction will have detrimental economic and environmental effects in the state.
“When the Trump administration began its review of Bears Ears and Escalante, many of us knew it was only a matter of time before these monuments were reduced and harm would come to our local economies,” Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski, who signed onto the briefs, said in a news release.
