HJM 009: Affirming FLPMA as Land Transfer Mechanism (2026)
Summary: House Joint Memorial 009 seeks to circumvent court rulings protecting Shoshone-Bannock treaty rights by reasserting FLPMA as the controlling authority for land exchanges.
ICL’s Position: Oppose
Current Bill Status: House Floor
Issue Areas: Public Lands, Native American Rights, Conservation
House Joint Memorial 009, introduced by Rep. Judy Boyle (R-District 9), appears to be an effort to undermine recent court rulings that stopped a controversial land swap between the Simplot Corporation and the BLM. The court had ruled that the Blackrock Land Exchange violated the U.S. government’s trust responsibility to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. The exchange would have swapped public land for private land owned by Simplot, enabling expansion of phosphate waste stacks near the Tribes’ Fort Hall Reservation. Historic industrial activities on the Simplot property had released arsenic, cadmium and selenium into the aquifer beneath the facility.
In approving this exchange, the BLM relied on authorization under the Federal Lands Policy Act (FLMPA) of 1976, which often governs land exchanges. However, both the U.S. District Court of Idaho and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that this parcel is instead governed by the 1900 Act of Congress, which permits exchanges only for specified purposes. As a result, the Tribes retain special treaty rights on this BLM parcel.
In this context, by affirming FLPMA as the controlling authority for land exchanges, the Memorial seeks to undermine longstanding treaty rights between sovereign nations.
