Lanora Pettit, deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in an opinion dated May 27 that President Donald Trump has the legal authority to dismantle national monument protections.
The White House previously asked the Office of Legal Counsel whether Trump could remove the national monument status for the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands national monuments in California.
“We think that the President can, and we should,” Pettit wrote. Pettit said the Antiquities Act of 1906 has been used by presidents to “withhold vast swaths of the American land- and seascape from potentially beneficial economic use by designating over 100 national monuments.”
The opinion effectively determined that presidents can declare any existing national monument as “either never were or no longer are deserving of the Act’s protections.”
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