posted on January 7, 2026 by Peter Van Tuyn
Congress recently used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) of 1996 to prevent a number of federal land management plans from going into effect. Congressional application of this law to federal land management plans is unprecedented and calls into question the legitimacy of every plan and plan implementation action since 1996. Additionally, Congress in doing so did not follow the procedures set forth in the CRA itself, procedures which underpin the congressional opportunity to block such plans and any substantially similar future plans from going into effect. Can you hear the wrench clanking around in those land management gears?
Some legal background here to make this rather wonky situation easier to understand. Through the CRA, Congress requires federal agencies to submit all “rules” to Congress and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Doing so opens a window for Congress to use CRA-specific procedures to review and potentially take action on the rule. If Congress uses the CRA, the rule at issue does not go into effect and the agency is precluded from issuing a substantially similar rule in the future. To add teeth to the CRA, Congress provided in the very first line of the CRA that no rule can go into effect before an agency submits its rule to Congress and the GAO.
The application of the CRA to land management plans, and the manner in which Congress used the CRA to prevent those plans from going into effect, introduces uncertainty to the legitimacy of existing federal land management plans and agency actions implementing those plans. And given the diversity of federal land management plans from conservation, co-management, recreation and resource development perspectives, this uncertainty cuts across often partisan dividing lines.
Plans on which Congress took action include three Biden-era BLM plans in Alaska: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil and gas leasing program 2024 Record of Decision, the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska Integrated Activity Plan, and the Central Yukon Resource Management Plan. Congress also took action on plans affecting federal land in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota.
At no point did the Interior Department submit these plans to Congress per the CRA. In fact, in response to a GAO request for Interior’s legal view on the application of the CRA to at least one specific plan (the Arctic Refuge), Interior declined to answer. This is no surprise given the chaos that can come from decades of land management plans that were never submitted to Congress.
To get around the pesky submittal issue for the targeted land management plans, opponents of those plans used as the CRA trigger a GAO decision document finding that the subject plans are rules for CRA purposes. From there Congress ultimately passed a joint resolution against each plan.
Um, ok, that’s odd. And putting that issue aside, what does this new use of the CRA mean for all existing federal land management plans? As noted, the very first line of the CRA states that “[b]efore a rule can take effect” the agency must submit its rules to Congress and the GAO.
The plain meaning of this language calls into question the legal effect of all federal land management plans and implementing actions from 1996 to the present. By way of example, this includes many thousands of oil and gas leases and associated decisions approving on-the-ground activities. Are all of these actions void? Will the wrench wreck the gears?
Stay tuned.