Utah is suing to seize federal public land. Is Montana next?. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox recently sued the Bureau of Land Management to turn over 18.5 million acres of federal public land to the state. He prefers the state to control and manage that land how it sees fit, specifically to open it to extractive industries or development. Utah filed its lawsuit with the Supreme Court in August, arguing that the BLM can’t hold onto land in perpetuity without designating it as a national forest, monument, park or wilderness area. The state calls BLM land, which is none of these things, “unappropriated land” – that is, land with no congressionally defined purpose, even though BLM land is leased for grazing and resource extraction and open to the public for an array of recreation.