On October 8, Congress passed a resolution to repeal a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Resource Management Plan (RMP) in Montana. Congress utilized a process outlined in the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal BLM’s Miles City RMP, which outlines land management directives for approximately 2.75 million surface acres and 10.6 million acres of mineral estate in eastern Montana. Similar resolutions to repeal RMPS in North Dakota and Alaska remain active in Congress. The impacts to hunters, anglers, trappers, and shooters resulting from the Miles City RMP revocation are yet to be determined. However, BLM lands are open to hunting, shooting, and other forms of recreation by default, unless expressly closed by the agency via rulemaking.
The Sportsmen’s Alliance currently chairs the Federal Lands Hunting and Shooting Sports Roundtable. The roundtable is a cooperative effort between hunting and shooting sports non-profit organizations and federal land management agencies at the national, regional, and local levels, aimed at planning and implementing mutually beneficial projects and activities related to hunting and shooting sports conducted on federal lands. As such, the Sportsmen’s Alliance consistently monitors and evaluates rulemaking and lawmaking that could impact access to hunting and shooting activities on federal public lands.
The CRA requires federal agencies to submit a report to Congress summarizing any new rules before the rules can take effect. It also allows Congress to rescind rules finalized within 60 days of receiving the report, or, if the rule was submitted to Congress within the final 60 days of the current legislative session, Congress has 60 legislative days beginning on the fifteenth day of the next legislative session to act. The process requires both the House and Senate to pass a joint resolution rescinding the rule. The joint resolution is then presented to the president, who may sign it into law or veto it. The passage of a CRA resolution not only rescinds the targeted rule, but it also prevents the rulemaking agency from promulgating a substantially similar rule in the future.
As a practical matter, the CRA is only utilized when the political winds shift greatly – a new party moves into the White House, and that party also holds a majority in both the House of Representatives and Senate. As of this June, just 36 rules have been rescinded since the CRA’s passage in 1996. Because of the CRA’s limited use, this is the first time a RMP has been rescinded under the statute.
Attorneys in the Sportsmen’s Alliance’s Office of Litigation Counsel have litigated multiple RMPs that unlawfully closed federal lands to hunting and recreational shooting and previous CRA resolutions. We’re currently analyzing both the passed and pending resolutions, and the associated RMPs, and we stand ready to defend the rights of hunters, anglers, and trappers in court if unlawful restrictions on our pursuits result from Congress’s actions.
The Sportsmen’s Alliance guarantees hunting, fishing and trapping for the American sportsman now and forever. We’re there when sportsmen need us most. We are the only organization specifically created to protect the individual hunter, angler, and trapper – no matter the threat. We will never compromise when it comes to defending our way of life in the courts, in the legislatures, in the public square and at the ballot box. We make this promise to the American sportsman: we will never give up and never give in while proudly securing our future against those seeking to destroy our values, beliefs, and traditions. Stay connected to Sportsmen’s Alliance: Online, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
