U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to hear two cases challenging the president’s authority to create national monuments on public land without congressional approval.

Bentz, a Republican from Ontario, represents Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Eastern Oregon and most of the state east of the Cascades.

He’s leading a coalition of representatives and senators who filed a brief with the nation’s highest court, urging it to review the American Forest Resource Council v. United States of America and Murphy Company v. Biden cases.

The first involves the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southwest Oregon. President Bill Clinton created the monument in 2000, and President Barack Obama added about 48,000 acres to the monument in 2017.

Those designations ended commercial logging in the area, which had been allowed in past decades, Bentz said.

The second case also involves the expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The lawsuit was filed by a private logging company, Murphy Timber Investments LLC, which contends the expansion of the monument is inconsistent with a different federal law that set aside some of the public land, now within the monument, for timber production.

Bentz argues that the creation and expansion of national monuments, including the Cascade-Siskiyou, violates the Constitution.

“The Constitution makes it clear that Congress, not the president, makes our laws,” Bentz said. “The president’s job is not to make law, but to enforce them. Yet, in recent years, presidents have increasingly usurped congressional authority by using the Antiquities Act to ‘monumentize’ millions upon millions of acres of public land rendering massive areas largely untouchable. This blatant disregard for the will of the people is an affront to the Constitution. In this brief we urge the Supreme Court to hear these cases and to make it clear that the president cannot circumvent Congress by rewriting our nation’s public land laws with the stroke of a pen. This is about upholding the Constitution, protecting our public lands from being left to burn up, and that they can be properly managed with the their best interest in mind.”

Bentz and the other lawmakers who signed the amicus brief to the Supreme Court contend that presidents can’t use the Antiquities Act, which Congress approved in 1906, to supersede provisions from another federal act from 1937, the Oregon and California Railroad and Coos Bay Wagon Road Grant Lands Act. The latter act designated land, including more than 10,000 acres that are now part of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, to be managed for timber production.

The 1937 act also requires revenue from logging on those lands to be distributed to Oregon counties that include some of the timberlands.

A representative from the American Forest Resource Council, the plaintiff in one of the cases Bentz cited, lauded the congressman for his efforts.

“We thank Congressman Cliff Bentz for his leadership on the Congressional amicus brief, and for bringing awareness to these important issues on Capitol Hill,” said Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resource Council. “Congressman Bentz and his colleagues understand the Constitutional issues that are at stake; the need to maintain and strengthen the separation of powers; and to ensure that Congress — not the President — continues to make the laws on behalf of the Americans they represent.”

A total of 28 members of Congress joined Bentz as co-signers in the amicus brief. The list includes Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican who represents Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, which is mostly west of the Cascades but also includes parts of western Deschutes County, including Bend.