SALON

Saturday, Sep 1, 2012 5:30 PM UTC

Central ‘sagebrush rebellion’ case suffers defeat

By

Topics: From the Wires,

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — America’s sagebrush rebellion has suffered a major setback far from the western rangeland where a modern battle was joined over grazing rights on public lands.

Over the past 21 years, firebrand Nevada rancher Wayne Hage and his survivors waged a legal war against federal land managers who were seeking to restrict cattle grazing on public lands and became a heroic symbol for those who yearned for bygone days and bridled at the growing reach of government.

Then in a little noticed decision on July 26, a three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., overturned Hage’s hard-fought multi-million-dollar legal victories.

It was a quiet rebuke to a legal saga that began in 1991 after the government impounded some of Hage’s cattle. The rancher had defied grazing restrictions in Nevada’s Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, and refused to pay fines for grazing permit violations.

Challenging the government in court was a costly and time-consuming endeavor that Hage threw everything he had at, including the ranch for which he was fighting.

With his ranch house stuffed full of legal tomes as he became immersed in the case, the suit-clad, salt-and-pepper-bearded Hage became the epitome of the sagebrush rebel — the ideological forefathers of today’s tea party — and breathed life into a movement that captured the rebel spirit of the Old West.

“Hage is a hero in the sagebrush rebellion. He bet the ranch, literally and deliberately, because he believed passionately in this cause,” said Jon Christensen, executive director of Stanford University’s Bill Lane Center for the American West.

“The tragedy is that so much intelligence, creative passion and love for the West … were wasted on such a doomed dead end,” he said.

After his cattle were seized, Hage and his wife Jean filed suit, saying the government’s denial of his rights to freely graze on public lands threatened his livelihood. Hage said ranchers like him had worked the land for more than a century, and should be allowed to continue.

In 2008, U.S. Claims Court Judge Loren Smith agreed, saying Hage’s rights had been violated, and ordered the government to pay the rancher’s family $4.4 million, a ruling that has now been tossed out.

But Margaret Byfield, Hage’s daughter, said from her home in Georgetown, Texas, that the family has until Sept. 10 to file for a rehearing and they plan to do it.

“We are not surprised by this decision. Sitting through the appellate court hearings, we could tell which way the judges were headed,” she said. “There was a lack of understanding of western law and how the western lands function.”

At issue before the courts was whether private ranchers have a constitutionally protected ownership stake in public lands, and whether federal overseers of those lands — in this case the U.S. Forest Service and BLM — illegally stripped the ranchers of that property.

Government land managers, enforcing environmental laws meant to improve conservation and public access to these lands, have curtailed unfettered grazing through issuing permits that regulate the number of cattle allowed in an area.

Judge Smith ruled that the government illegally “took” Hage’s rights to graze on public lands by blocking his access to water.

Wayne Hage died in 2006; Jean in 1996. His estate was awarded the damages.

“If Hage’s case had succeeded, it would have been virtually impossible for public land managers to control private ranchers’ use of western public lands for cattle grazing,” said John Echeverria, a professor of law at Vermont Law School who filed “friend of the court” briefs in opposition to Hage.

“This would have made it far more difficult to maintain the public’s lands in a healthy state and make them available for a wide variety of public uses, including hunting, fishing, hiking and other forms of recreation,” Echeverria said.

Bureau of Land Management Nevada spokeswoman JoLynn Worley said the office could not comment on the ruling because of a related, ongoing trespassing case involving the Hage family. In the separate but related proceeding, a district court judge in Reno, Nev. on Friday indicated the Hage family and others are not guilty of trespassing on public lands, and that he intends to find federal rangers in contempt for issuing trespass notices while his court was still deciding the case.

Even though the long-running legal saga has turned against the ranchers, those who fought alongside Hage said the sagebrush rebellion lives on, albeit with a different tone.

“I think the fight’s going to continue, but it’s not a rebellion anymore,” said Fred Kelly Grant, a former federal prosecutor and private property advocate who helped Hage’s family with the case.

Grant and Hage’s family now advocates not for “rebellion” but “cooperation,” a theory that the federal government is compelled by law to work more closely with states and counties when revising public lands policy.

Hage’s daughter offers $1,500, eight-hour courses on how to implement the coordination strategy, a concept that has become popular with tea partyers and other states’ rights political movements.

In the coordination movement, the sagebrush rebellion lives, Grant said. “As long as there are people in the rural West, the battle between those people and those who would have them off the land is going to go on.”

___

Scott Sonner in Reno, Nev. contributed to this story.

___

Jason Dearen can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/JHDearen

More Jason Dearen.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations