House Dems slam 'unconstitutional' pro-mining resolution

The Republican proposal would roll back administration environmental protections.

May 12, 2023

House Democrats on Thursday blasted as unconstitutional a Republican resolution that would undo federal protections near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to allow mining.

During a Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources hearing, ranking member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) took aim at the resolution from Chair Pete Stauber (R-Minn.).

It would reverse the Interior Department’s recent decision to withdraw thousands of acres in northern Minnesota from mining and other activities.

"Now we are seeing today a proposal to use a clause of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, or the FLPMA, that is widely accepted as unconstitutional to try to overturn the withdrawal," said Ocasio-Cortez.

"In fact, even the National Mining Association has argued the provision’s unconstitutionality in court," she said.

The Superior National Forest, in Stauber’s district, is home to a deposit that Twin Metals Minnesota LLC, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining company Antofagasta PLC, is pushing to mine.

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'Unconstitutional stuff'

Legal scholars have long called that section of FLPMA allowing a so-called legislative veto unconstitutional because it bypasses the president, unlike the Congressional Review Act, a point that Democrats and their witnesses seized on at the hearing.

Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California asked Becky Rom, national chair of the Save the Boundary Waters Campaign, why the resolution was unconstitutional.

Rom pointed to a 1983 Supreme Court ruling in which justices determined vetoes that circumvent the president are unconstitutional.

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“Everybody agrees it’s unconstitutional,” said Rom.

Huffman said, "So this isn’t even a really debatable point, it’s unconstitutional stuff."

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By:  Hannah Northey
Source: E&E Daily