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The Hanley Ranch

MSLF is diligently pursuing the mission that drives all of us—liberty. One of our attorneys, Brian Sheldon, has his eye on restoring access to our federal lands that are designated for multiple uses.

What is “multiple use,” you ask? Multiple use designation indicates that a parcel of land owned by the federal government may be used for a wide variety of purposes. Among those purposes are recreation, conservation, wildlife management, grazing, mining, and energy production. The broad definition of “multiple use” is one of the reasons we see so much litigation involving federal lands. Sadly, a half-century of bureaucracy and lawfare has obscured the fact that ranchers and farmers—the descendants of the people who settled the American West—still have fundamental rights to continue their traditional livelihoods on public lands, which benefits all Americans.

Historically, folks in the West have made rich use of federal lands by obtaining permits from the federal government to use a parcel of land for a specified purpose. One of the most traditional of these uses is grazing livestock. The first action Brian is taking on this issue is preparing an amicus brief in Corrigan v. Bernhardt in the U.S. District Court for Idaho. Mountain States represents the Idaho Cattle Association and the Owyhee Cattlemen’s Association in support of the plaintiffs. Two of the plaintiffs, Mike and Linda Lee Hanley, are members of the Owyhee Cattlemen’s Association. Their family ranch is near Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, on which their family had legally grazed cattle for decades. That is until the BLM decided to refuse to renew the Hanleys’ permits in 2009.

A grazing permit is issued to a specific person (much like a driver’s license) while a grazing preference is “attached” to private property, somewhat like a water right or an easement, since it goes with the land. Permits and preferences have a complex relationship. A preference alone won’t let you graze your cattle; you have to have a permit for that. But without a preference, you may not be able to get a permit because another preference-holder has priority over you. It sounds complicated because, well, it is.

Sadly, the BLM exploited this complexity to destroy the Hanleys’ family ranch. The Hanleys’ permit was not renewed in 2009, so they decided to pass their ranching operation on to the next generation. In 2013, the Hanleys leased their private property—with the attached grazing preference—to their daughter and son-in-law, Plaintiffs John and Martha Corrigan. The Corrigan’s applied for a grazing permit based on the underlying grazing preference, thinking they could step into their parents’ shoes and take over the family ranch. That’s when things went south.

The BLM acknowledged that the Corrigans otherwise met the qualifications for a permit but denied their application in favor of another applicant. Why? The BLM stated that the Hanleys’ grazing preference automatically terminated in 2009, even though the BLM never issued any notice that the preference was going to terminate. In addition to “forgetting” to tell the Hanleys that it eliminated their grazing preference four years earlier, the BLM created a new legal theory that a grazing preference has no existence outside of a grazing permit.

The government must honor property rights!

During the Clinton Administration, the BLM administratively rewrote the requirements of the Taylor Grazing Act. In doing so it undermined or abolished many of the safeguards that Congress originally put in the Act to safeguard these preferential grazing rights that had been recognized for generations. The government determines that you have a priority-based right of use attached to your private property based on certain factors (such as historical use). That priority right can’t be destroyed because the agency decides not to graze the land for a while, or if it allows another person to graze it instead.

Aside from the technicalities of federal rangeland management, this case is another opportunity for us to take aim at unaccountable government bureaucrats. It is another chance to continue demanding that the judiciary meaningfully review agency actions rather than acquiesce to the dominance of the unconstitutional, all-powerful bureaucracy.

I hope this whets your appetite for the battle for property rights that MSLF attorney Brian Sheldon is excited to bring to the courts. The trend of locking up public lands from beneficial use simply must be reversed. In just permitted grazing lands alone, the BLM holds 155,000,000 acres. That is 155,000,000 acres that ranchers should be allowed to put to use to raise the livestock that makes us able to not only feed America but so many others as well.

Brian has another case coming down the pike on a similar issue that I hope to share with you soon!

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