The outdoor apparel company Patagonia joined conservation and tribal groups to sue President Trump on Wednesday, seeking to overturn his move to shrink Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah by more than one million acres.
The lawsuit escalated Patagonia’s feud with Mr. Trump, which began in the president’s first term and became a core part of its corporate strategy. And it kicked off a sweeping legal battle over whether presidents have the power to shrink such sites in the first place.
Mr. Trump signed a proclamation in July that cut 91 percent of Bears Ears, an expanse of red-rock canyons rich with archaeologically significant sites, reducing its area by more than 1.2 million acres. He also shrank a second monument in southern Utah, Grand Staircase-Escalante, by nearly 1.7 million acres, or 90 percent.
The moves opened vast stretches of the desert landscape to oil drilling, uranium mining and other development. Companies have already staked at least nine mining claims in areas that were removed from both monuments, records show.
But the suit argues that the law governing national monuments, the Antiquities Act of 1906, authorizes presidents to designate the sites but not to shrink them.
Ryan Gellert, the chief executive of Patagonia, said in an interview that it was a “difficult time” for businesses to stand up to Mr. Trump, who has been using the federal government’s power to punish law firms, universities and other institutions.
But, he said, pushback “is more needed now than ever, and I think that this administration, for the 19 or 20 months that they’ve been in office, has been super intent on deploying a whole-of-government attack on nature and the natural world.”
Representatives for the White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the complaint, which was filed in Federal District Court in Washington.
Sean Buchanan, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Manitoba who has studied Patagonia’s activism, said the suit would probably help its business. He noted that the company had one of its most profitable years in 2017, when it first sued Mr. Trump over a similar move to shrink the same monument.
“That was a signal to them that they can engage in seemingly risky corporate activism that might alienate customers and not be punished,” he said. “The rationale is that there are enough customers who support suing the Trump administration, and rather than engage in a boycott, they’ll engage in what we call a buy-cott.”
National monuments are lands that are legally protected from development. They are similar to national parks, but while national parks are created by Congress, national monuments can be created by executive action.
In addition to Patagonia, the plaintiffs include the Conservation Lands Foundation, an environmental group, and A’Nuche, a nonprofit group led by members of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. Bears Ears is the ancestral homeland of the Ute Mountain Ute and four other tribes in the region.
Deena Ute, the executive director of A’Nuche, said her ancestors had lived in the area for centuries before the federal government forcibly removed them in 1923. She said Mr. Trump’s proclamations amounted to “more erasure of us and who we are as a people.”
Ms. Ute also raised concerns that mining and vandalism could damage artifacts like burial grounds and rock art.
“It’s easy to destroy it, but it’s hard to get back,” she said.
The lawsuit challenged only the decision to shrink Bears Ears. Separate complaints seeking to restore the boundaries of Grand Staircase were filed by other environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council.
President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears in 2016. The monument is named for a pair of buttes, or flat-topped hills, that rise thousands of feet above the surrounding canyons, dominating much of the nearby landscape.
President Bill Clinton classified Grand Staircase in 1996, halting plans for a coal mining project there. The site is named for a sequence of sedimentary rock layers studded with fossils, including the preserved remains of dinosaurs that roamed the region more than 74 million years ago.
During his first term in 2017, Mr. Trump similarly shrank both monuments at the urging of top Republicans from Utah. But Patagonia, tribes and environmentalists sued, and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. restored sweeping protections to both sites before a court could issue a final decision.
The suits filed Wednesday seek to reactivate the litigation brought in 2017. But some environmental lawyers have raised concerns about that strategy. They worry that the cases could reach the Supreme Court, where the conservative majority could rule that previous presidents abused the Antiquities Act. Such a ruling could reverberate far beyond Utah, potentially stripping protections from millions of additional acres across the country.
Rob Tadlock, the deputy general counsel at Patagonia, said the company had contemplated that scenario. But, he said, it decided that “the risk of doing nothing is greater than the risk of taking on this challenge.”
Mr. Trump’s executive orders targeting big law firms and other corporations have led some to acquiesce to his demands. But other firms have successfully challenged the administration’s tactics.
As for Patagonia, this is hardly the company’s first time tangling with the president over public lands.
When Mr. Trump shrank the Utah monuments in his first term, Patagonia protested the decision on its website. Instead of promotions for colorful clothing, the site featured a stark message — “the president stole your land” — against a black background.
Before the 2020 election, the company made another political statement. On the underside of the tags of some shorts, it inserted a message to vote against politicians who denied the reality of climate change.
More recently, Patagonia has faced off in court against a different adversary. The company in January sued Pattie Gonia, a drag queen and environmental activist, for trademark infringement, accusing her of using its name for commercial purposes.
Some customers have criticized that suit on social media, calling it an attempt to silence the activist. Mr. Tadlock said the company had hoped to avoid that complaint and it was eager to reach a resolution.
A spokesman for Mx. Gonia declined to comment.
