HELENA — Republicans in Congress have voted to overturn a Biden administration rule that closed off new federal coal leases in the Powder River Basin of eastern Montana.
Last year, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced an amendment to the resource management plan for its Miles City field office. That amendment said no new leases would be issued on about 1.7 million acres of land deemed to have potential for coal development. It would have left only the existing Rosebud and Spring Creek coal mines active.
At the time, leaders cited concerns about climate change and predictions that demand for coal would continue to decline in the coming years.
(Watch the video for more on Congress' action to reverse the BLM decision.)
After the BLM’s decision, Montana officials said the move threatened jobs and went against what the state and affected counties wanted. The state of Montana sued over the closure.
“This lack of respect for Montana's local and statewide elected officials cannot be ignored,” U.S. Sen. Steve Daines said on the floor of the Senate Wednesday. “It will not be ignored. And it's going to get changed and reversed today.”
On Wednesday morning, the Senate approved a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to reverse the decision on the Miles City resource management plan, with Daines and U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy in support. Last month, the House also advanced the resolution, with backing from U.S. Reps. Troy Downing and Ryan Zinke. It will now go to President Donald Trump’s desk.
The Congressional Review Act allows the House and Senate to override a rule issued by a federal agency with a simple majority in each chamber – notably, avoiding the requirement for 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate. However, the president can veto that action, meaning a CRA challenge is more likely to be successful after the transition from one administration to another, as in this case.
The Trump administration has put an emphasis on expanding energy development, including using coal, and they were already considering reversing the BLM decision. However, by passing a resolution under the CRA, Congress can prevent the agency from proposing a “substantially similar” action in the future.
Daines called the Senate’s vote “righting a wrong.”
“Taking this action this day today will lead to more Montana jobs, more Montana energy – by the way, more Montana tax revenue to support K-12 education and stronger communities in eastern Montana,” he said.
But environmental groups argue Congress improperly stepped into an established process.
“There was a public process underway to consider revisions to the Powder River Basin land use management plans; that process has not been completed,” said Jenny Harbine, managing attorney for the Northern Rockies office of the environmental law firm Earthjustice. “But today, Congress short-circuited that public process, imposing its own partisan politics on land use management in the region.”
Harbine said the BLM’s decision was legitimate and took into account public input and the balance of competing uses. She said economic forces are still working against coal development, and that the impacts of more mining need to be considered.
“I'm concerned that more broadly, this precedent risks partisan meddling with nearly every land use plan adopted over the past three decades,” Harbine said.
The action Congress took here is unusual. A 2024 report from the Congressional Research Service found lawmakers had only overturned 20 rules under the Congressional Review Act since it was implemented in 1996. That list hasn't included a specific local land use plan as in this case, though in 2017, Congress did reverse an Obama administration change to the BLM’s rules for creating and updating those plans.
