It is a demand that the rule of law must be acknowledged by the federal government and that a limit to the authority of the Endangered Species Act must be recognized.
Penalties for taking a protected species range up to a $50,000 fine and/or a year in federal prison.
For nearly seven years, affected property owners along the river tried to settle these disputed titles with BLM. And for nearly seven years (and counting), BLM failed to come to the table.
Nonetheless, BLM claims all of that is riverbed, and the federal government owns it.
While the court mulls over the particulars of the challenges before it, Americans have an opportunity to rethink whether administrative agencies like the EPA should determine the boundaries of their own authority in the first place.