Supreme Court Greenlights Transfer of Sacred Public Lands to Foreign Mining Giant
Oak Flat, a sacred Apache site protected as public land for generations, will now be handed to Rio Tinto for copper mining – leaving a 1,000-foot crater in its place.
The Supreme Court just gave a foreign mining company the green light to blast a crater through one of the most sacred Apache sites in existence.
Yesterday, the Court declined to hear Apache Stronghold v. United States – a case that sought to block the transfer of Oak Flat, federally protected public land in Arizona, to a foreign-owned copper conglomerate.
The order was one sentence:
“The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. JUSTICE ALITO took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition.”
That’s all it took. No hearing. No explanation. No oral arguments. Just a quiet refusal – backed by the weight of the Court – and the destruction moves forward.
Only two justices dissented. But not the ones you'd expect.
Oddly enough it wasn’t the Court’s liberal wing that raised the alarm here.
It was Neil Gorsuch.
And Clarence Thomas.
In a rare alignment, the two conservative justices issued a sharp dissent that read like a rebuke to the rest of the bench. Gorsuch, writing for both, acc…