ShareTrails | 12 Days of Legal Updates: Day 1 BRC Plans to Hire Staff Attorney and Grow Legal Program

During the past year, BlueRibbon Coalition has engaged in hundreds of administrative actions that affect access to outdoor recreation experiences on public lands. We are proud of the work of our policy team, and we believe that showing up is making a big difference. In many cases this is behind-the-scenes work where we are the only recreation-focused organization that is adding your voice to these plans.

In other instances we regularly publish our action alerts, and we mobilize thousands of our members and supporters to be part of the effort.

There are times when it is necessary to work with our legal team to challenge decisions through administrative hearings and court appeals. One of the actions we highlighted in this series of 12 days of legal action was the challenge to close Massacre Rocks in Idaho to various recreation users. We started building our legal standing for that decision in 2011. It has taken over 12 years for the agency to complete this plan.

The closures in Moab were the result of a process that essentially began in 2008. 

This ability to play the long game and stay engaged in these fights for years and decades is one of the things that sets BlueRibbon Coalition apart from many other recreation-focused non-profits. Before coming to work for BlueRibbon Coalition I was planning to start a new non-profit that would do similar legal and policy work. Ultimately, I decided it would be a much better use of my time and energy to build BRC, because BRC has been carefully building legal standing for decades to be a strong voice in keeping our public lands open. 

BRC has gone to the Supreme Court in the past, and we plan to appeal our challenge to the Antiquities Act all the way to the Supreme Court if it becomes necessary.

Historically we have always retained 3rd party attorneys to do our legal work. While this gets the job done, it is common for non-profits that engage in public-interest litigation to hire full-time staff attorneys to do their work.

A year ago during our end of year fundraising drive in 2022, we announced our goal to raise enough funds in 2023 to commit to hiring a full-time staff attorney. My team and I worked hard this year, and during our annual Board of Directors meeting in November, we determined that we had exceeded our budget targets to hire a staff attorney. We are confident that this is the next step for growing our impact as we fight for you. We appreciate all the support that has made this possible!

Today we published our hiring notice for this position. If you know anyone qualified who might be interested in this great opportunity, please help us spread the word.

Happy New Year!

Ben Burr

Executive Director