The U.S. Bureau of Land Management sidestepped the National Environmental Policy Act in issuing its new “conservation rule,” a “sea change” in federal land management that threatens wildlife, landscape health and economies reliant on some 245 million acres of BLM-managed lands across the nation, a lawsuit filed this week by Wyoming and Utah alleges.

The two western states, which, combined, are home to more than 41 million BLM acres, filed the 34-page lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Utah. They’re asking the court to vacate the Conservation and Landscape Health rule, which was finalized in April.

“Ever since this abomination of a rule raised its ugly head, demonstrating the Biden administration’s disregard for the law, I have fought it tooth and nail,” Gov. Mark Gordon said in a prepared statement Wednesday. “This legal challenge ensures that this administration is called out for sidestepping the bedrock federal statutes which guide public land management by attempting to eliminate multiple use through a corrupted definition of conservation, and for doing so with impunity.”

The complaint is the latest in Gordon’s mounting legal battles against the Biden administration over land use and climate policies. The administration has issued a suite of new policy measures in recent months that violate Wyoming’s primacy over wildlife management and many state-led programs to implement federal environmental rules covering things like emissions from coal, oil and natural gas, according to the governor. Gordon has said the administration appears intent on destroying the state’s fossil fuel industries while ignoring his own initiative to “decarbonize” those industries as a means to address climate change.

Freedom Caucus members in the Wyoming Legislature, however, have alleged a “lethargic” response from Gordon regarding recent federal rules.  

Gordon has scheduled a town hall event from 1-3 p.m. Tuesday in Gillette to highlight his administration’s response to the barrage of new federal policies, which include the Environmental Protection Agency’s coal pollution rules, the BLM’s sage grouse management amendments, its “methane rule” and a proposal to end federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.

Conservation rule

The BLM unveiled its proposed conservation rule last year, citing the need to adapt federal land management strategies in recognition of mounting pressures from climate change, such as intense drought, wildfires and invasive plant species.

The rule “promotes conservation and defines that term to include both protection and restoration activities,” according to the BLM. The rule also “clarifies that conservation is a use on par with other uses of the public lands” under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

“It seems that Utah and Wyoming are employing all these strategies to try to drag all of us down into the legal weeds to distract everyone from the larger picture, which is that the public wants to see more balanced management of these resources and values.”

Rachael Hamby, Center for Western Priorities

Conservation groups, including the Lander-based Wyoming Outdoor Council, have hailed the conservation rule as a victory for landscape health that also supports rural economies by ensuring healthy wildlife habitats and outdoor recreation.

The rule, “does not prevent oil and gas drilling, mining, or grazing on public lands,” the council states on its website. “But it does enshrine protection and restoration as necessary components of responsible management. In doing so, our wildlife habitat, areas of cultural importance, water quality, and landscape intactness all stand to benefit.”

In a webinar hosted by the council last year, the group’s Wildlife Program Manager Meghan Riley said the BLM’s conservation rule is a much-needed correction to what has been an over-emphasis on industrial development.

​​”Some of these money-generating uses have gotten a little bit more attention in management decisions, and some of these conservation values may have fallen by the wayside,” Riley said. “So the intent of this rule that’s been put forward is to put conservation on equal footing with some of these other uses on BLM lands and bring better balance to management decisions.”

U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, introduced a bill last year to block the rule. Nine senators, including U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) joined as sponsors. The bill has not advanced.

Barrasso also said he would use the Congressional Review Act to block the rule. But that hasn’t happened. 

“It seems that Utah and Wyoming are employing all these strategies to try to drag all of us down into the legal weeds to distract everyone from the larger picture, which is that the public wants to see more balanced management of these resources and values,” Center for Western Priorities Policy Director Rachael Hamby told WyoFile on Wednesday.

Hamby pointed to a Center for Western Priorities analysis of public comments submitted to the BLM regarding the rule. The group found that 92% of the comments were either in support of the rule as proposed or in favor of making it stronger in terms of conservation.

“So in terms of American taxpayers, whose lands these belong to, are in overwhelming support for this rule,” Hamby said.

“The BLM is supposed to have been managing for multiple uses this entire time,” she continued. “What we have seen is that the extractive industry has been getting priority a lot of the time, and they have gotten used to that. So now we see this rule that says, ‘We’re gonna get back to a true multiple use management framework,’ and now they’re going to be one of many uses that are on equal footing in terms of how the BLM manages its public lands.”

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Wyoming will see more contested statehouse races this primary election than the last, but the number of Democratic legislative candidates who are participating has hit a 26-year low, an analysis of election data by WyoFile shows. 

Sixteen Democrats will run for the Legislature this year, according to the 2024 primary election candidate roster. That’s less than half of the 26-year average, and far below the high point of the last decade, when 62 Democrats ran in 2016. 

Meanwhile, the number of Republican candidates running for the statehouse has steadily climbed since 1998. 

Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie), the Legislature’s longest-serving Democrat, said a lot has changed since he was first elected in 2011. 

“The current political climate is such that it’s unwelcoming to engage in politics,” Rothfuss told WyoFile. “You have an awful lot of hatred and vitriol, more so than the past, and the campaigns are mean and destructive instead of constructive oftentimes.”

The rising cost of running for office in Wyoming is likely another culprit. 

Jen Solis, a political newcomer running for Cheyenne’s House District 41 as a Democrat, said she sees the low number of candidates as a natural extension of “Democrats being told over and over and over again that ‘You don’t belong here.’”

“I think we’re seeing folks saying, ‘What’s the point of giving up my summer to do all this for nothing?’ And I personally don’t think it’s for nothing. I think people deserve a choice,” Solis said. 

The number of candidates running this year mirrors a decline in the party’s statehouse representation, which took a hit in both the 2020 and 2022 elections, dwindling to Democratic representation at the statehouse to seven lawmakers from two counties. 

Wyoming Democratic Party Chair Joe Barbuto said he’s hoping the party can move past several events in recent years that “made it more difficult in Wyoming to be a Democrat,” including the pandemic and the U.S. House race between Liz Cheney and Harriet Hageman. 

“We had a lot of people think that switching over to vote in the Republican primaries would be a productive tactic. And it really wasn’t. I mean, we can look at the outcome,” Barbuto said. “So that’s something that we have to rebuild from.” 

That tactic, which did not help Cheney save her seat, also put the Democrats at risk of losing their major party status. 

Neither of the Senate’s two Democrats are up for reelection — Rothfuss and Sen. Mike Gierau (D-Jackson). Otherwise, the House’s five Democrats will all seek reelection, three of whom will face Republican challengers.

The 11 remaining Democratic candidates are either political newcomers or former lawmakers. 

Details

While this year is a certain kind of a low point, the high point wasn’t that long ago. In 2016, 62 Democrats ran for the Wyoming Legislature. 

“It was spectacular,” Rothfuss said. It wasn’t a coincidence either. 

“That was a deliberate effort by Aimee Van Cleave, who was the executive director of the Wyoming Democratic Party at the time,” Rothfuss said. She tried to get a candidate to run “for every single seat and she came pretty close.”

Thanks to Van Cleave’s candidate recruitment efforts, Wyoming had one of the highest ratios of contested races in the country that year, according to the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

Ten Democrats were elected to the statehouse that year, but Rothfuss said the intention for some candidates wasn’t simply to try to win races.

Lots of Democrats ran to give voters choices and “to make sure that Democratic values were heard, and priorities were communicated,” Rothfuss said. 

That’s a much harder sell in today’s hostile political climate, he said.

“When you have a circumstance where there’s this much hostility in politics, it’s a pretty hard sell, to get someone to go into an election, where there’s a very, very high likelihood that they’re going to lose that election, just to communicate values,” Rothfuss said. 

Barbuto said while he would have liked for there to be more Democrats running for the Legislature, he’s “thrilled with the Democrats who are running for office at every level of government.”

“There’s some exceptional people with a variety of backgrounds that bring a lot of needed voices and experiences,” he said. 

While there’s no denying that running for office in Wyoming as a Democrat is a lot less appealing than it used to be, Barbuto said, he remains optimistic. 

“There’s really an incredible amount of work, mostly at that county level, going into building this party for the future,” he said. “When you look at our infrastructure, our party, the passion of our volunteers and dedication that we have to this work, despite all those odds, and what we’re up against, it’s pretty inspiring, actually.”

That was on full display earlier this month when Democrats gathered in Casper for their state convention. The party settled its platform and resolutions, and elected its delegation to represent the state at August’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, but chose to schedule one of its bigger agenda items for a special convention early next year.  

“We’re gonna do a complete rewrite of our state party bylaws,” Barbuto said. Between now and December, a committee will meet to develop a draft that will be more reflective of the party’s embrace of technology, activist grassroots, and more progressive views on gender identity.

More to come?

In the meantime, Barbuto said he’s not ruling out the possibility that more Democrats make it onto the ballot for the general election thanks to the state’s provisions on write-in candidates. 

If a write-in candidate receives at least 25 votes in the primary election, state statute allows them to appear on the ballot in November. 

Such was the case with Jen Solis in 2022 with House District 41, which encompasses a section of north-central Cheyenne. 

“There was going to be an uncontested race on my ballot, and I don’t like that,” Solis said. “I never like going to vote and seeing there’s only one name there.”

On impulse, Solis said, she decided she’d run as a write-in and ended up with the requisite 25 votes. That gave her less than three months to campaign for the general election where she faced Rep. Bill Henderson (R-Cheyenne). 

Solis ultimately lost, but not by much — 221 votes. 

“I think what that campaign showed was that people do want choice, and I think that’s important across the state,” Solis said. “It’s something that we’re getting away from.”

Depending on who wins the Republican nomination in House District 41, Solis will face Henderson again, or Gary Brown for the first time.  

Solis said her 2022 campaign was a “super positive experience,” but said she’s also prepared to face whatever ugliness she encounters on the campaign trail. 

“We’ve let this sort of story take over, this narrative of, ‘We are the most conservative state.’ And sure, yeah, we are. But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been Democratic leadership that shaped our way of life,” Solis said, pointing to Wyoming’s former Democratic congressmen, governors and lawmakers. 

“And we’re losing [sight of] that if we only let the debate be between the ultra-far right and the moderate right,” Solis said. “There has to be a conversation that includes all Wyomingites.”

The primary election is Aug. 20. Early voting for most residents starts July 23. 

Tennessee Watson contributed to this reporting.

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Teton County leaders declared Monday that Jackson Hole and Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks are open and accessible to visitors despite the destruction of a key regional highway.

A landslide Friday night severed the mountain-pass artery between Jackson Hole and Victor, Idaho, a vital commuter and commerce route that is one of five paved roads into the valley. As news of the landslide hit the nationwide press, worried prospective tourists peppered hospitality hosts, asking whether they could still come and reach the region’s recreational attractions.

“Jackson Hole is open,” Teton County Commission Chairman Luther Propst said during a hastily prepared briefing from a group of 10 emergency managers Monday morning. He led a discussion that included calls for aid to commuting workers across a spectrum of needs from housing to transportation, child care, carpooling and more.

Gov. Mark Gordon declared an emergency Saturday, enabling the state to seek Federal Highway Administration funds to repair the highway. The destruction of a segment of the road “endangers the health, safety, economy, and resources of residents of Wyoming” the declaration reads.

“The impact is a lot more on our community.”

Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce President Rick Howe

A detour around the destroyed section of highway could be fixed in “weeks, not months,” Darin Westby, director of the Wyoming Department of Transportation, told the Teton County Board of County Commissioners over a broadcast link. That will be well into the region’s busy summer tourism season, which has already begun.

Fearful that news of the landslide would crimp the local and state economy, tourism officials and others urged a unified message saying the parks and valley are open and accessible.

Visitors from California, New York and Texas with vacation reservations have asked “will things still be accessible?” said Rick Howe, president and CEO of the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce.

Other than the one route, the message to visitors is “we are not closed,” Howe told the county board. Considering that there are four other highways into the valley, visitors have options to get to Jackson Hole, he said, to enjoy the Snake River along with Grand Teton and Yellowstone parks.

“The impact is a lot more on our community,” Howe told the board.

Temporary housing

Loss of the highway means commuters from the Idaho side of the Teton Range, where housing is cheaper than Jackson Hole, will have to drive an extra 62 miles. That adds 1 hour and 6 minutes to what is usually a 24-mile and 32-minute drive. Congestion will increase that time as thousands of commuters re-route their daily travel through Swan Valley, Alpine and the Snake River Canyon.

Fully 20% of the workers at St. John’s Health are affected commuters, hospital spokesperson Karen Connelly told commissioners Monday, and 115 of those “need to be on-site.” Many work 12-hour shifts and have pets, children and homes to worry about.

Adding what could be up to four hours of commuting time to such shifts creates obvious burdens, she said.

“These are long days for people,” she said. “There are needs.”

Additional response

Commissioners will meet Tuesday to take action on a host of recommendations made by emergency and community leaders, including reducing occupancy limits in some housing blocks, giving temporary occupancy permits to others, allowing RV and tent camping, waiving bus fees and other proposals.

“There’s a limit to how many people we’re allowed to put in our units,” said Mary Kate Buckley, president of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The ski-area company has constructed employee and workforce housing that’s regulated to some degree by development agreements with Teton County.

She asked for a temporary waiver of those occupancy limits and flexibility in other restrictions to accommodate commuters during the emergency. The resort also wants permission to house worker trailers, campers and tents at potential sites at a Teton Village parking lot and the Stilson transit hub a few miles south of the resort and village.

The Jackson Hole Community Foundation has reactivated its emergency fund that was last used during the COVID-19 emergency, said Laurie Andrews, president of the nonprofit hub. The foundation, best known for its annual Old Bill’s Fun Run for Charities that raises millions of dollars each fall for nonprofits, is setting up a network to pair unoccupied guest houses and vacant rooms with commuting workers, she said.

The town and county START public bus service has reworked its Idaho-Jackson schedule to accommodate the longer drive, director Bruce Abel told commissioners. Ridership on the first day of the new schedule was “somewhat disappointing,” he said, but that could change.

Congestion in the Snake River Canyon and Jackson during the emergency could extend the new, longer commute times, he said, because the highway network is “at capacity.”

The Federal Transit Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, reached out to START to offer aid, he said. START will carefully log expenses with the aim of securing reimbursements during the emergency, he said.

That reimbursement was “top of conversation” with the federal agency, Abel said. The federal outreach came as U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg expressed his agency’s support for Wyoming’s emergency repairs in a post on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

Rich Ochs, the county’s emergency management coordinator, outlined the difference between emergencies and disasters and told the board that the governor’s emergency declaration was the proper and sufficient reaction. Being a Wyoming highway, the incident is the state’s to manage, he said, and the appropriate venue for aid is through the Federal Highway Administration, another arm of the USDOT.

It’s not appropriate to pursue Federal Emergency Management Agency support, Ochs said. “We have one injury,” he said, a motorcycle rider who was unseated by a slump in the highway some time before it collapsed. “We have no deaths … no direct impact” to town and county finances.

While WYDOT works on a solution — a paved two-lane bypass to the missing highway segment that will require motorists to slow down from normal speeds — Ochs and his eclectic 10-person team of department heads and community organization leaders will continue their efforts.

While costs may accrue to state and federal coffers, “the impacts,” he said, “are our problem.”

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It’s been nearly five years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision recognizing tribes’ treaty-based hunting rights, and two months since a lower federal court issued an order related to tribal elk hunting in the Bighorns. Still, many of the fundamental legal and policy questions about where, when and if certain Native Americans are bound by state hunting regulations remain far from resolution. 

Meanwhile, the landscape of case law in which observers expected the lingering legal questions to be resolved has quietly, but meaningfully, shifted: Wyoming has dropped the charges in the partially remanded Herrera v. Wyoming case, meaning the case is dead and its unresolved elements will remain that way. 

That has elevated the importance of a case that began when Thomas Ten Bear, a member of the Crow Tribe, was convicted of elk poaching in the Bighorns in 1989. Though completely separate from the more modern Herrera case, Ten Bear’s shares a number of key elements: both center around Crow Tribal members being prosecuted for killing elk in a national forest in Wyoming without a state-issued permit.

Years before the Supreme Court’s Herrera ruling, Ten Bear asked a federal court to throw out his nearly 35-year-old poaching conviction. In late March, with the new precedent in place, U.S. District of Wyoming Judge Alan Johnson issued a 27-page order partially granting Ten Bear and the Crow Tribe’s requests for relief. While doing so, he hewed closely to the specific case before him. 

The judge made a couple of “important” judgements that helped establish consensus around “key legal questions,” said Sen. Affie Ellis (R-Cheyenne), an attorney and member of the Navajo Nation who has followed the issue closely.

“Unequivocally, [the order] says that statehood admission does not abrogate treaty rights,” Ellis told WyoFile. “The case unequivocally says that just because you create a national forest, [it doesn’t mean] that those lands are occupied.” The Crow’s treaty grants hunting rights in perpetuity on “unoccupied” lands.

But other important questions about off-reservation hunting remain unresolved, she said. 

Creating a national forest doesn’t make it “occupied,” but there are ambiguities about when portions of a forest — or any land — can be considered occupied and off-limits to treaty-based tribal hunting. Separately, there are unanswered questions about “conservation necessity,” and when the state could regulate or even prevent tribal hunting outside of reservation boundaries.  

Johnson didn’t definitively answer those questions. Ellis didn’t think he would. 

“If he made a blanket statement of how [off-reservation hunting] should look, it would probably have been treated as … an opinion, but not binding precedent,” she said. “There are limits on what a court can do.”

The judge was ruling on a narrow case, stemming from Ten Bear’s elk poaching conviction 35 years ago. Ten Bear and the Crow Tribe sued Wyoming using a 1868 treaty right argument, but lost. Then decades passed before the Supreme Court ruled the opposite in the Herrera case.

Wyoming dropped charges against Clayvin Herrera last year after an unrelated conviction on felony child pornography charges promised a long prison sentence. That means lingering legal questions about “occupancy” and “conservation necessity” will no longer be resolved through that case, Ellis said. The nation’s highest court had sent back those questions for the Sheridan County Circuit Court to answer. But with the charges dropped, the case is dead.

The Crow Tribe, meanwhile, has sought relief from the Ten Bear judgements, known as Repsis after the game warden who brought the original charges. That request was bounced from the U.S. District Court of Wyoming to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and back to the federal district court, where Johnson ruled while considering the new Herrera precedent in late March. 

Agreement needed

Cheyenne attorney David Willms believes that Wyoming and tribal residents with treaty hunting rights in state bounds still lack a clear blueprint for resolving off-reservation tribal hunting.

“My read between the lines is the judge is saying, ‘The state and the tribes need to get together and work this thing out,’” said Willms, a former policy advisor for Gov. Matt Mead and an adjunct law teacher at the University of Wyoming. 

In his ruling, Johnson wrote that the two parties should “endeavor to strike a balance between treaty-based … rights and state sovereignty over natural resources.” 

The Supreme Court’s Herrera v. Wyoming ruling, he wrote, suggests that the two are “necessarily compatible.”

In the five years since Herrera, there has been one big effort to make off-reservation hunting compatible in the state of Wyoming.

During the Wyoming Legislature’s 2023 general session, lawmakers were advancing a tribal agreement bill that Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Brian Nesvik described as his “biggest legislative lift” of the year. In essence, the legislation would have granted Gov. Mark Gordon the authority to negotiate state-tribal pacts for off-reservation hunting and angling seasons that went outside of Game and Fish Department regulations.

The Eastern Shoshone Tribe initiated the effort in 2022 and was initially on board. But then southeast Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock — other tribes with treaty hunting rights in Wyoming — protested, arguing that they were cut out of the process and that the bill was too prescriptive, violating their sovereignty. Eventually the bill lost all tribal support. The legislation died, but not before “poisoning the well,” as one state senator put it at the time. 

Since then, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has taken the position that tribal members can be cited for off-reservation hunting and angling that violates state seasons and regulations. 

“On the ground, it’s still not legal for tribal members [without standard permits] to hunt off-reservation in Wyoming on unoccupied lands,” Nesvik told members of the Legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee in January. “That’s the way we’re treating it. We do know that the Supreme Court made some decisions that we need to deal with.” 

Nesvik cited the “gray area” left by the Supreme Court: “We believe that ‘conservation necessity’ exists, and until there’s tribal regulation that’s agreed upon with the state, those tribal rights can’t be executed,” he said.

The Billings Gazette reported this winter that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks responded to the Supreme Court’s decision very differently, instructing its wardens not to cite Crow Tribe members who violate state hunting laws in the Custer Gallatin National Forest east of the Yellowstone River. The state and tribe are discussing additional off-reservation hunting grounds in Montana, but have not asserted their treaty rights in Wyoming, Crow Tribal Fish and Game Director Ryan Fitzpatrick told the newspaper. 

“We didn’t want to get into an argument or court case,” he told the Gazette. “They said they want time to identify unoccupied lands. We didn’t want to go out there and say we have a treaty.”

Continued impasse

Meantime, there are few signs of progress toward resolving off-reservation hunting in Wyoming. 

Wyoming Game and Fish officials declined an interview for this story, deferring to Gov. Mark Gordon’s office, which released a statement. 

“To date, neither tribe has indicated a desire to continue the discussion on off-reservation hunting with the state,” the governor’s statement said. 

WyoFile was unsuccessful in its attempts to interview Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribal leaders. The two tribes occupy the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming. Efforts to reach the Crow Tribe in Montana and Shoshone-Bannock tribes in Idaho were also unsuccessful.

Gordon desires “government-to-government negotiations” with the tribes to mutually agree on off-reservation hunting. That approach is more “positive and productive” than “unpredictable, expensive and contentious” litigation, he said in the statement.

“It is not, and has never been, the governor’s intention to unilaterally regulate tribal hunting on or off of the reservation,” the statement said. “Instead, the governor’s intention is to find common ground on shared values of wildlife conservation and responsible hunting.”

Ellis, the attorney and state senator, also believes that the best way to move forward is outside of the courtroom. Having a tribal member violate Wyoming hunting laws as a test case would subject that person to prosecution and “doesn’t seem appropriate,” she said. 

There are “important lessons” to be learned from Wyoming and the Eastern Shoshone Tribe’s failed 2023 effort to reach agreement, Ellis said. 

“The unfortunate thing is how that bill was drafted and the way it was negotiated,” she said. “We came to see that the Shoshone-Bannock tribes had concerns about the bill, as it was drafted, and not being included in the drafting of the bill.” 

Going forward, Ellis said, it’s important to have an agreement that includes both of the Shoshone tribes that signed onto the 1868 Treaty of Fort Bridger. Article 4 of the treaty states: “… they shall have the right to hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States so long as game may be found thereon, and so long as peace subsists among the whites and Indians on the borders of the hunting districts.” 

Toward a resolution

It also makes sense for Wyoming to strike an agreement with the Crow Tribe, which has similar treaty language, over hunting in the Bighorn National Forest, Ellis maintains. 

Rep. Lloyd Larsen (R-Lander), who was the primary sponsor of the 2023 tribal agreement bill, told WyoFile that Johnson’s order “adds clarity” and will help the tribes and state understand what the courts will expect. At the same time, he said, it left a “lot of flexibility.”

Importantly, Johnson’s order did not end the Repsis case, Ellis said. Effectively, she said, that case has supplanted Herrera as the case where the particulars of “occupied land” and “conservation necessity” could be determined legally. 

There is a lot of legal precedent that will guide the resolution to those questions.

On the issue of occupancy, other courts have ruled that the presence of cattle, fences, cultivated fields and buildings can be a determinant, Ellis said. 

“If an area is open and available to hunting, it’s probably considered unoccupied,” she said. “But how do you parse that out when there might be signs [stating] that those lands have been leased? That’s a little unresolved.”

Resolving “conservation necessity” will be even more difficult in court, Ellis said. The status of a species or big game herd often changes one year to the next, whether from persistent winters that collapse pronghorn herds or drought-driven diseases that devastate deer herds.

“A court can only look at a snapshot in time with one case or controversy,” Ellis said. “To me the better solution would be a negotiated agreement.” 

The state senator reiterated her hope that Wyoming and the tribes can find common ground. 

“It’s important to let the dust settle and let the parties reevaluate where they are,” Ellis said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be within the next year or two that people are ready to re-engage, but at some point in the future, hopefully all the parties will be willing to have these discussions again.”

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Thousands of Wyoming residents could be surprised on Election Day when they show up to cast a ballot only to discover they’re no longer registered to vote. 

There are currently about 83,500 fewer registered voters in the state than at the end of 2022, a roughly 28% drop, according to data released Wednesday by the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office.

The sizable dip follows a mandatory voter purge that was likely magnified by a major shift in voter turnout between the 2020 and 2022 elections.

Wyoming law has long required county clerks to purge voter rolls each February, a process that involves removing voters who did not cast a ballot in the most recent election. So it’s not unusual for voter rolls to fluctuate. And, of course, some of that purge inevitably includes voters who have died or moved away. 

Still, local election officials and nonprofit organizations are hoping to inform voters ahead of time to avoid frustration or having to turn them away at the polls. 

“Our concern is simply people not realizing that they’re no longer registered and not bringing with them the appropriate materials to get re-registered, because you can register at the polls,” Tom Lacock with AARP told WyoFile. 

While a Wyoming driver’s license or ID card, a United States passport, a tribal ID card, a U.S. military card and some student IDs would be sufficient identification to register and to vote, other forms of identification would not. 

A Medicare or Medicaid insurance card, or a Wyoming concealed firearm permit, for example, would not allow someone to register to vote, but are acceptable IDs for already registered voters to cast a ballot. 

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Chuck Gray said the provision requiring the purge has been in state law for more than 50 years. 

“Voter roll hygiene and voter registry maintenance is extremely important to maintaining integrity and confidence in our electoral process,” he wrote in a statement to WyoFile. 

Details

All 23 of Wyoming’s counties have experienced a decrease in registered voters since December 2022, according to the data. 

Campbell County saw the biggest drop, losing 34% of its voter registrations, while the smallest decrease was recorded in Hot Springs County at 17%. 

Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee pointed to a very high turnout in 2020 as one cause for the decline.  

“And so our voter rolls were large. And then in 2022, we had record low turnout [in the general election],” Lee told WyoFile, which fits the convention that presidential elections draw more voters than the midterms.

“That’s why we ended up with so many people who were purged,” Lee said. 

As is routine, Wyoming’s county clerks mailed notifications to the last known addresses of those who were set to be dropped from the voter rolls in 2023. This gave voters the opportunity to notify the clerk if they wanted to remain registered. 

Thousands ended up purged anyway. 

That included many who voted in 2022’s primary election, but not the general — which squares with another typical voting trend. The majority of races in Wyoming are effectively decided in August due to the state’s Republican supermajority.

Lacock said AARP is encouraging voters to contact their local county clerks to verify that they’re still registered, or ask any questions related to other changes to this year’s election. 

The window for absentee voting — also known as early voting — is shorter than before for most voters, and there’s a new limit on when voters can affiliate with a political party. 

The primary election is Aug. 20. Voter registration is now open. The last day registered voters can change their party affiliation is May 15. Unregistered voters, like those recently purged, can choose their party affiliation while registering, even if doing so after May 15, including at the polls on election day.

The candidate filing period runs May 16-31.

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Federal environmental officials have rejected a request by Aethon Energy to pump Moneta Divide oilfield wastewater into the Madison aquifer, saying the deep reservoir could be used for drinking water, especially by tribal nations on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in November 2020 approved wastewater disposal into the 15,000-foot deep well, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said last week the state’s decision did not align with federal rules.

Aethon’s plan does not support a finding “that the aquifer cannot now and will not in the future serve as a source of drinking water,” the EPA wrote in a 20-page record of decision. Aethon argued, and the Wyoming commission agreed 4-1, that the underground Madison formation was too deep and remote to be used for drinking water.

The EPA relied on the Safe Drinking Water Act as the authority under which to protect the aquifer. It also cited climate, environmental justice and tribal interests in its decision, pointing to the nearby Wind River Indian Reservation as a community that could use the water.

“We have to make sure our future generations have a reliable source of clean water.”

Wes Martel

“The significance of that is the EPA finally didn’t wimp out on us,” said Wes Martel, a member of the Wind River Water Resources Control Board. “We’re just glad they now have some people in place following up on their Indian policy.”

The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes “foresee increased reliance on groundwater for drinking water purposes and anticipate needing to access deeper aquifers, such as the Madison aquifer, as the climate changes and water resources grow scarcer,” the EPA wrote in a 94-page analysis of tribal interests. The agency cited historic cultural and spiritual ties to the land and water and tribes’ status as sovereign nations in its decision.

“We have to make sure our future generations have a reliable source of clean water,” Martel said. “Our reservation, this is all we have left. We’ve got to do our best to protect it.”

The Powder River Basin Resource Council, along with the Wyoming Outdoor Council and others, has spent years monitoring discharge reports and industry permits and was vital in challenging pollution threats, Martel said.

The EPA understood that science, and the law did not support Aethon’s request, said Shannon Anderson, organizing director and staff attorney with the resource council. “They recognized the value of our groundwater resources and the need to protect those into the future,” she said, hailing the decision.

Vast quantities of water

Aethon must find a way to dispose of produced water — a brine pumped from energy wells to release gas and oil — as it expands the Moneta Divide field by 4,500 wells. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management authorized that expansion in 2020, leaving the question of water disposal to Wyoming, which has authority over surface and underground water quality under overarching federal standards.

Aethon must find a way to dispose of the equivalent of 120 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of produced water a day to expand the field. Aethon and Burlington Resources, a co-producer at Moneta, could generate $182 million a year in federal royalties, $87.5 million a year in Wyoming severance taxes and $106 million annually in County Ad Valorem taxes from the expansion.

But Aethon has violated state permits that allow it to pump some produced water into Alkali and Badwater creeks that flow into Boysen Reservoir, a drinking water source for the town of Thermopolis. Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality has notified the Dallas-based investment company of its infraction and has required Aethon to reduce the salinity of surface discharges this year.

The DEQ this year listed the two creeks as “impaired” and unable to sustain aquatic life. Underground injection of wastewater into the Madison was to be a new component of the disposal program.

The EPA cited climate change, drought, increasing temperatures and use of reservation surface water by others as some of the reasons to preserve the Madison aquifer.

“Removing the existing statutory and regulatory protections for a potential source of high-quality drinking water for the rural and overburdened communities in Fremont County and on the WRIR would further exacerbate existing inequities particularly with respect to historic and ongoing adverse and cumulative impacts to water resources and community health,” the EPA wrote.

“Thus, equity and environmental justice considerations, which include Tribal interest considerations, support maintaining the existing [Safe Drinking Water Act] protections that apply to the aquifers consistent with Congressional intent to protect both current and potential future sources of drinking water,” EPA documents state.

Neither Aethon nor a representative of the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission responded immediately to a request for comment Wednesday. But WyoFile received this response from Tom Kropatsch, oil and gas supervisor for the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, shortly after publication:

“We do not agree with EPA’s decision on this application. We are still reviewing their decision and the information utilized by EPA in support of their decision. Much of this information was not part of the original application or a part of the record. EPA did not follow the standard procedure of allowing the WOGCC and the applicant to review and respond to the additional information they had available prior to making their final decision. EPA evaluated data that differs in its geographic, geologic, engineering, and other technical information. EPA also inappropriately related the proposed injection location to other areas of the state. Since the data EPA reviewed does not accurately reflect the conditions at the location of the proposed disposal well it is not appropriate to rely on it for a decision on this application. The WOGCC is reviewing EPA’s decision and weighing its options for further action.”

The post Feds reject plan to pump Moneta oilfield waste into potential drinking water appeared first on WyoFile .

As people from Wyoming and beyond join in righteous indignation over an ugly incident in which a man tortured and killed an animal simply because it was a wolf, we would do well to examine the policy framework that set the stage for tragedy. As in all tragedies, the result is not just the downfall of the main character. The story has layers of irony — not situational irony, which would be a surprise, but tragic, dramatic irony with an air of inevitability, not fully recognized by the participants but strongly sensed by the audience.

One man has become the public face of Wyoming by torturing an animal — running down a wolf on a snowmobile, taping its mouth shut, dragging it to town broken yet alive, showing it off at the Green River Bar, and then finally killing it. In doing so, he confirmed stereotypes many Americans have about hunters, rural Americans and the Cowboy State. 

The irony isn’t just that an ethically challenged hunter undermined the social license of all hunters while bringing the treatment of wolves to national attention just as non-governmental organizations are suing, again, over the status of wolves in the Northern Rockies. It’s also that those who hate wolves regularly tout the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, a set of principles that guides hunting policy based on the idea that wildlife is held in public trust, to be scientifically managed, and only killed for valid reasons. Yet, the treatment of animals legally classified as predatory is hardly consistent with the model.

I last stopped at the Green River Bar, the oldest building in Daniel, my kind of place — heretofore known for its slaw dawg — while paddling the Green River from its headwaters in the Wind River Range, across western Wyoming to Utah and Colorado. I was investigating possible corridors from the Northern to the Central and Southern Rockies, routes by which animals like wolves, wolverines or perhaps grizzlies might reoccupy habitats to the south. The conclusion was clear: Absent persecution by people, it could happen, but Wyoming’s policies are a thinly veiled attempt to restrict large carnivores to the mostly federal lands of Greater Yellowstone. In the Predatory Animal Management Area or “predator zone,” wolves can be shot on sight, year-round, for no reason.

The people I’ve worked with in Wyoming are almost all conservationists; many of them are also hunters and ranchers. Most of those folks don’t kill wolves except to reduce livestock conflicts, and most of them wouldn’t condone the events that culminated at the “GRB.” 

Nevertheless, a series of policies set the stage. Apparently, there is nothing illegal about running an animal down with a snowmobile, provided that animal is classified as a predator. That happens more than most of us would like to admit, and not just in Wyoming. But perhaps most of all, that stage is the predator zone — which has prevented nationwide recovery, and, ironically, federal delisting. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will finally develop a nationwide recovery plan for the gray wolf across its historic range, likely identifying suitable habitat throughout the Rockies. Had such a plan been in place a decade ago, it seems unlikely that Wyoming’s state plan would have been approved. Or perhaps wolves would have been delisted where they are abundant (Greater Yellowstone), but not where they remain rare (the predator zone). 

In any case, nothing was stopping Wyoming from setting policy in what is now the predator zone. A new federal listing may force the state to remove or redraw the predator zone.

I submit that an adequate regulatory mechanism would take a live-and-let-live approach, incentivize conflict reduction, and retain lethal control as a backstop to address repeated conflicts. The recent outrage suggests that many Americans would agree that such a policy is needed.

Gov. Mark Gordon, Game and Fish Director Brian Nesvik, Wyoming Speaker of the House Albert Sommers and Sublette County Sheriff K.C. Lehr have condemned the recent incident. I’d prefer that they had done so before the story went viral, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt considering the legal state secrecy around wolf killings. Now, I’d like to see Sublette County’s lawmakers and candidates lead the state Legislature to revise animal cruelty laws to cover all wildlife. 

Wyoming, a state known for its live-and-let-live mentality, could at least pass laws to protect a wild animal’s right to die with dignity and not be run down by a snowmobile and suffer in a bar. And to the species that so reminds us of ourselves, on to which we project so much human meaning, the Equality State could extend the right not to be killed simply for being a wolf.

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Cody Roberts walked into the Green River Bar joking that he’d found a lost cattle dog. The woman tending bar that evening seemed to know what would happen next.

“The bartender goes, ‘Cody, you better not bring in a fucking lion,’” an eyewitness recalled. “She knew he was going to bring something in that was not a dog.” 

Roberts didn’t listen. It wasn’t a dog and it wasn’t a lion, but moments later he reappeared with a muzzled, leashed wolf — an animal that wanted nothing to do with the Green River Bar. 

“It didn’t want to go,” the bar patron recalled. “Like you know when your dog doesn’t want to go to the vet?” 

The 42-year-old resident of the small western Wyoming town of Daniel muscled the reticent animal inside. The gravely injured wild wolf remained in the rowdy tavern for hours thereafter.

Wyoming, and the rest of the world, wouldn’t learn of Roberts and the wolf for a month. Since then, the allegations against Roberts — that he ran down the wolf on a snowmobile, taped the injured animal’s mouth shut and showed it off at the bar before killing it — have become international news. Authorities have released few details about what happened beyond two short videos and a citation that showed he was fined $250 for possessing a live wolf.

This account of what happened at the Green River Bar on Feb. 29 comes from an eyewitness to whom WyoFile has granted anonymity. The person, who was at the bar that night and later alerted authorities to what had occurred, is being left nameless at their request for their own safety. The worldwide outrage over this incidence of animal abuse has generated rampant death threats — even toward those who had nothing to do with it. The eyewitness provided WyoFile with videos from that night which corroborated their account.

Patrons of the Green River Bar had a mixed response to a wolf in their midst, the eyewitness recalled. About half of the 30 or so people who came and left the watering hole while the wolf was present that evening appeared to be friends and family of Roberts. 

“People were petting it, taking photos of it, hugging on it,” the person recollected. “I want to be clear: He wasn’t kicking or beating or torturing it. The torture was in not putting it down when he ran it over.” 

“He was a jokester about it,” the eyewitness added, “while it was just sitting there bleeding to death.” 

Wounded wolf

The eyewitness who described the events of Feb. 29 to WyoFile also reported the incident to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. In response to the tip, State wildlife managers began investigating Roberts on March 1, the day after he brought the animal to the bar. By March 4, Roberts and his attorney met with wardens Adam Hymas and Bubba Haley, during which time he admitted to possessing the live wolf at both his home and a private business, according to legal documents WyoFile acquired through the Wyoming Public Records Act. 

During the night at the Green River Bar, the eyewitness did not hear Roberts brag about how or when he acquired the wolf. 

But through subsequent communication with a Game and Fish staffer after the tip, the eyewitness was told that Cody Roberts admitted to running it over with a snowmobile. He “injured it so bad it could barely stay conscious,” one state employee told the eyewitness.

Roberts ran down the wolf in an area where Wyoming manages wolves as a “predator” — a zone covering 85% of the state in which there are virtually no regulations on how wolves can be killed. Bludgeoning wolves with snowmobiles here is legal. 

Wolf biologist Doug Smith, recently retired from a decades-long tenure at Yellowstone National Park, has reviewed the footage of the wolf in the Green River Bar. Smith was confident the wolf was a yearling born in 2023, which means it would have been about 9 months old by late February. The retired biologist had a read on the animal’s behavior.  

“It’s recovering from severe injury, and it’s probably got internal organ damage,” Smith told WyoFile. “The fact that this wolf should be freaking out — and it’s not — indicates it’s in pain and badly injured.”

It’s not always obvious when a wolf is dying from internal injuries, Smith said.

“Having necropsied wolves that have been kicked to death by elk,” he said, “it’s hard to tell externally that they suffered any damage and trauma.”  

Roberts could not be reached for an interview. He declined to speak with Emily Cohen, the reporter for community radio station KHOL, who first broke the story, and could not be located when a WyoFile reporter tried to interview him at his home.

Mixed reaction

In the eyewitness’ opinion, Roberts, who runs a trucking company, thought the entire episode was hilarious.

“I don’t know if he’s literally low-IQ, and just doesn’t get that this shit’s not OK,” the eyewitness said. “He was drunk and rambling mostly. A guy who thinks highly of himself.” 

After Roberts initially ignored the bar owner, she “didn’t waste her breath” and did not ask the Daniel man to leave or remove the wolf. The eyewitness could tell that the Green River Bar’s owner, who worked solo that night, “was not OK with it,” but was in a tough spot. 

“His family were half the patrons at the bar that night,” the eyewitness said. “What are you going to do, kick the whole bar out and close up for the night?” 

WyoFile’s attempts to reach the bar owner for an interview were unsuccessful. 

Nobody forcefully told Roberts that he needed to put the animal out of its misery during the hours the eyewitness was present. Some patrons were clearly bothered by what was happening, but those folks just removed themselves from the situation and left, the eyewitness said. 

Roberts, meanwhile, kept trying to draw attention to his prize. 

“By the end of the night, he was calling it a wolf,” the eyewitness said. “He definitely admitted that he put the collars on it.” 

In two short video clips of the wolf taken in Green River Bar released by Game and Fish on Wednesday, the prone gray-coated wolf is wearing what appears to be a commercial tracking and shock collar. The eyewitness never saw Roberts shock the dying animal. 

The eyewitness left the Green River Bar not knowing what became of the wolf. Later, the witness learned from a Game and Fish staffer that the animal was killed.

A WyoFile reporter heard it was shot behind the Green River Bar when he visited the establishment. 

Roberts was fined $250 for illegal possession of warm blooded wildlife, but that was the full extent of the penalty administered by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Subsequently, the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office launched its own investigation, probing Roberts’ actions for potential animal cruelty violations. 

“Our office, along with the Sublette County Attorney’s Office, are working with Wyoming Game and Fish to gather evidence and information relevant to the case,” a statement from the sheriff’s office reads. “As this is an active investigation, we will not be able to release any details at this time.”

The eyewitness, who “loves” Sublette County, regrets how the community’s reputation has been tarnished because of one man’s actions. 

“It didn’t need to happen,” the person told WyoFile. “It gives it a bad name. It’s a beautiful place, and there’s great people here. We’re not all Cody Roberts.”  

The witness to the tormented, gravely injured wolf also hopes that law enforcement punishes Roberts much more severely so that he and others learn a lesson. 

“He’s been going around town telling people it was worth it,” the eyewitness said. “$250? That’s a round for the bar.” 

“I would like to see a law that is determined enough to keep people from keeping animals alive when they should not be alive anymore,” the witness added.

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In the rolling sagebrush flats east of Cody roams one of the most unusual pronghorn herds in the world, but rarity doesn’t spare its members from a familiar threat of the modern world. 

Most antelope — sinewy creatures able to run faster than any North American land mammal — spend winters and summers in the safety of the plains. But instead of summering in roughly the same areas where they winter, this herd starts wandering west in early spring. The animals traipse through public and private land before looking for spots to crawl under, hop over or shimmy through fences along Highway 120. And then a portion of the herd keeps going, migrating high into the Absaroka Mountains where they find an oasis of open plateaus well above 10,000 feet elevation.

“The distance and elevation these pronghorn go are incredible,” said Hall Sawyer, a wildlife biologist with West Inc., and longtime Wyoming migration researcher. “They’re also really the only herd we know of that occupies alpine habitats.”

The nearly 60-mile migration from sagebrush lowlands to grassy high-mountain meadows sustains thousands of pronghorn each summer. But that journey across Highway 120, a busy stretch of two-lane road between Cody and Meeteetse, is becoming increasingly hazardous. And as more cars race up and down the highway to and from Yellowstone National Park and neighboring areas, more elk, deer and pronghorn meet their fates on the bumpers of trucks, sedans and SUVs. 

On average, at least 100 deer, elk and pronghorn die each year on a 27-mile stretch of Highway 120. Sawyer worries that without intervention, and as traffic only increases, the world’s highest pronghorn migration may one day be severed completely.

Collision carnage

Biologists have long known pronghorn summer on the Absaroka plateaus. Outfitters, hikers and hunters have told stories of sightings. But no one knew for sure where they were coming from. 

That changed in 2019, when Sawyer and colleagues placed GPS collars on about 120 pronghorn in the Carter Mountain herd and spent two years following their movement. They found that about half of the 7,000 animals in the herd migrate from the prairie to the mountains, with a fraction of those going all the way to the top. For whatever reason, the animals decided the alpine food was worth not only the long migration but also the dangers that come with summering amid grizzly bears, wolves and mountain lions. 

Even the antelope that don’t wander 4,000 feet uphill into the mountains each year still move west every spring and early summer. And slicing right in the middle of that transition is Highway 120, a death trap for not only pronghorn but a suite of other wildlife. 

In October, one car collided with a herd of elk, resulting in seven animals dead from the impact or euthanized because of injuries. While official counts say about 100 animals die each year, a 2021 study shows that actual deaths are likely two to even three times higher. 

The highway affords a few potential quick fixes, according to a recent report by the Beyond Yellowstone Program, a group of researchers and biologists tackling some of the thorniest wildlife problems in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Some box culverts — those square tunnels under highways created for water and occasional livestock to pass through — could be modified for mule and whitetail deer and elk. More fencing could also be modified. 

But biologists say wildlife, especially wary pronghorn, may ultimately need a roomier crossing.

Wildlife priority list

Even more dire than the number of wildlife deaths are the percentages. Because herd numbers are either stagnant or declining, the proportion of wildlife killed by vehicles is increasing, Sawyer said. 

“It’s a pretty long stretch of road that has a lot of collisions from a lot of species,” Brian Nesvik, Wyoming Game and Fish’s director, said of Highway 120. “The road runs right through the middle of the winter range as they transition across to get from winter to summer.”

Game and Fish works with Wyoming Department of Transportation engineers each year to create a list of the highest-priority projects. It’s a rolling tally that shows government agencies and nonprofits like The Wyldlife Fund where project needs exist and why. Project implementation relies on money, of course, which can reach tens of millions of dollars. 

The state’s current top three include a project on Highway 26 between the Wind River Reservation and Dubois and one on Interstate 80 between Laramie and Rawlins. A third project is currently being assessed, and Nesvik said the Highway 120 crossing is pushing its way to the top. 

Severing a route

While highway engineers and biologists wait for the gears of the highway-crossing machine to grind, they’re considering other possible options. WYDOT has spent the past five years working with the Bureau of Land Management and Game and Fish to create wildlife-friendly fencing. Much of it includes using strands that antelope can crawl under and fences with wood logs on top that make it easier for elk to jump over without catching their hooves or legs, said Randy Merritt, WYDOT’s District 5 construction engineer.

Those efforts have helped cut down mortalities, Merritt said.

“We’ve tried to maximize the opportunity for them to cross wherever they want,” he said. “If we can allow these animals to squeeze through, it will lessen their time spent in the right of way.”

Those are great short-term fixes, Sawyer said, but if traffic volumes continue to increase at the rate they have been, the highway may as well be a brick wall. 

Corinna Riginos, The Nature Conservancy’s Wyoming field office director of science, found that if 60 seconds pass between vehicles, deer are generally able to cross a road successfully. If less than 30 seconds pass between vehicles, the deer will either turn back or “make an unsafe crossing decision,” which results in either a collision or a car swerving or slowing way down. Those numbers are likely similar for pronghorn.

“Traffic is the real challenge for animals to get across the road,” she said. 

And that traffic will likely only intensify as more people flock to Wyoming’s northwest corner. Traffic has increased from about 800 vehicles per day in the 1970s to almost 2,500 vehicles per day now, according to a report by the Beyond Yellowstone Program. About 500 more vehicles drive on the highway each day than did a decade ago. 

“These are all a reflection of people loving the landscape and wanting to be near it, in it, part of it,” said Arthur Middleton, a senior advisor on wildlife conservation for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and longtime Yellowstone-area researcher. 

“The risk is that this love for the place ends up harming it through a death by a thousand cuts,” he continued. “If people want to keep diverse and abundant wildlife, they will need to find ways to develop and recreate responsibly and lessen the impacts of high traffic volumes on roadways.”

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As the Wyoming Legislature’s budget session began, lawmakers had at least 10 bills to consider related to transgender people, gender-affirming care, pronouns, obscenity and school programming. 

As the week ended, only three measures remained. 

The rest failed to receive enough votes for formal introduction, a higher bar because non-budget bills require a supermajority.

The fact that legislation like House Bill 50 – What is a woman act failed to garner enough votes may be a sign of lawmaker pragmatism and a focus on the budget, said Wyoming Equality’s Executive Director Sara Burlingame. But perhaps it was something else, too, she added. 

“I’m not sure if this is true or not,” she said, “but I think it’s possible that people have grown really fatigued of hearing people be really hysterical about what’s in other people’s pants.”

The Senate was the only chamber to formally introduce bills that could still affect trans Wyomingites this year — in part because of disagreements between factions of House Republicans. The first reading of the budget bill also went late into the evening in the lower chamber Friday, leaving limited time to introduce additional legislation before a key deadline.

The first gender-based bill to achieve introduction and head to committee was Senate File 94 – An act regarding compelled speech and state employers. Mirroring bills and laws in many other states, Sen. Lynn Hutchings (R-Cheyenne) said she’s sponsoring this constituent-requested legislation to protect state employees from repercussions if they misgender someone.

That is, the state wouldn’t be able to “compel or require an employee to refer to another employee using that employee’s preferred pronouns,” under threat of adverse actions, to maintain employment, or to secure a contract, grant, license or other benefit. 

Those still required to use a coworker’s preferred pronouns can sue under this bill.

Burlingame said she fears the legislation could enable harassment by those who intentionally misgender coworkers because of their looks. She recalled an incident with a female state employee.

“She worked with a man who wouldn’t use female pronouns for her and referred to her as male. She wasn’t,” Burlingame said. “But she was able to go to HR and get it resolved. Because in the state of Wyoming, we believe in decency and good manners and people aren’t allowed to mock you or deride you for your appearance or how you present yourself.”

Old and new

Two other bills headed to committee hearings are Senate File 98 – Statute of limitations-medical procedures on minors and Senate File 99 – Chloe’s law-children gender change prohibition, both sponsored by Sen. Anthony Bouchard (R-Cheyenne).

Senate File 98 allows minors who received “gender transition services” to sue a doctor over that treatment until the age of 21. 

“It just includes the hormones, puberty blockers, surgeries — all of it,” Bouchard said Friday.

Noting someone who had surgery while still a minor and regretted it, Bouchard said, “this is happening all over the country where there’s just two years that they can actually come back and say, ‘whoa wait a minute, this doctor did this to me.’”

Studies show that situations like what Bouchard described are exceedingly rare. Less than 1% of people who undergo gender-affirming surgeries regret it, according to a study of nearly 8,000 teens and adults who underwent these procedures. 

Regardless, there is no evidence that gender reassignment surgeries are performed on minors in Wyoming. 

Senate File 99 is a rerun of a bill that failed during the general session last year, minus a section about health insurance. Named after a woman who underwent a mastectomy as a child in California and later regretted it, Bouchard has championed the legislation both years.

“It has teeth in it,” Bouchard said. “[The bill] says you can’t do it in Wyoming, you can’t change the sex of a minor.”

That includes using surgeries, hormones or puberty blockers. 

Opponents of last year’s bill — like Wyoming Medical Society Executive Director Sheila Bush — argued it demonized doctors who don’t use surgeries but in rare circumstances do use medications like puberty blockers “to give kids more time.”

“I think what we have with this bill is a sad example of when politics overcomes good policy,” Bush told the Senate Labor, Health and Social Services Committee last February. “Good policy might have looked like working together and crafting a bill that maybe outlawed the procedures and surgeries.”

There are exceptions in the bill, including for genetic sex development disorders and abnormally early puberty, but some of those testifying last year feared there weren’t enough protections, and that parents of disabled children could be affected. 

Meantime, a federal judge in Idaho blocked enforcement of a similar law in that state last year, citing violations of the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

“It just includes the hormones, puberty blockers, surgeries — all of it.”

Sen. Anthony Bouchard (R-Cheyenne)

As WyoFile reported last year, trans people have the highest rates of suicide among any identified group, according to research and a national survey from 2015. Meanwhile, researchers have found worse mental health and double the rate of suicidal thoughts and attempts among youth who don’t receive gender-affirming care when compared to youth who do.

Numerous medical groups back the use of gender-affirming care for minors. They include: the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society, among others.

Wyoming is home to one of the highest suicide rates in the nation, though rates have been falling. 

Failed introduction

Early in the session’s first week, two bills focused on gender and transitioning didn’t receive enough votes to be introduced. That included House Bill 50 – What is a woman act and House Bill 63 – Sex and gender changes for children-prohibited.

House Bill 50, sponsored by Wyoming Freedom Caucus member Rep. Jeanette Ward (R-Casper), aimed to define females and males based on what their “reproductive system was developed to produce” and their chromosomes, with some medical exemptions. 

It specified how the definitions would apply to spaces denoted for females or males in athletics, detention facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, restrooms “and other areas where safety or privacy are implicated.”

“It gives dignity to womanhood by protecting it,” Ward said on the House floor, later referencing a private sorority’s decision to accept a transgender University of Wyoming student into their group. 

A lawsuit over that sorority’s decision was dismissed at the district court level in August, but plaintiffs have appealed. 

House Bill 50 failed introduction 37-24, with 20 Republicans voting against it.

House Bill 63, on the other hand, didn’t go far enough, according to the Freedom Caucus. It would have banned surgeries or procedures altering the sex of — or sterilizing — minors.

“There aren’t any gender reassignment surgeries taking place currently [in Wyoming], but my feeling is that a child under the age of 18 is developing emotionally, mentally and physically, and really … should be prohibited from making those types of decisions that can have such long-term impact on their life,” Rep. Lloyd Larsen (R-Lander) said Wednesday on the House floor. 

But Rep. Sarah Penn (R-Lander) argued “this bill does not go nearly far enough,” pointing to the omission of hormones and medications from the bill.

“There’s other vehicles that are much better, much more encompassing to actually protect our children, and I would urge no vote on this,” she said. 

That bill failed introduction 33-28. 

Bill breakdown

There are other bills this session that could have disproportionately affected transgender people and the larger LGBTQ+ community in Wyoming — but failed to receive enough votes for introduction. These are some WyoFile identified as of Friday.

House Bill 61 – Fiscal accountability and transparency in education: Sponsored by Rep. Penn, this bill would have required school districts to submit exhaustive annual reports on how much they spent to “implement, deliver or support” programs that directly — or indirectly — address social issues, political or social activism, and diversity, equity or inclusion. 

Districts would also need parental or guardian permission for kids to participate in classes or training involving those programs. Others in the district would be allowed to opt out.

The bill’s definitions of the programs include topics that polarize society, school-endorsed activity meant to affect or prevent change in government policy, and policies that promote “differential or preferential treatment of individuals or classifies such individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity or sexual orientation.”

House Bill 68 – Obscenity-impartial conformance: This short bill, sponsored by Rep. Ben Hornok (R-Cheyenne), would have eliminated a statutory exemption that allows people within “bona fide” schools, colleges, universities, museums or public libraries to have or disseminate what the state considers to be “obscene material.”

Burlingame said legislation aimed at theoretical obscenities has targeted trans people in other states.

“The obscenity [bills] we definitely include in our ‘hostile to trans folks’ category, just because that’s how we’ve seen it implemented in other states,” she said. “The existence of a trans person is what’s being weaponized and called obscene.”

House Bill 88 – Public display of obscene material: Rep. Pepper Ottman (R-Riverton) sponsored this bill, which would have made it a misdemeanor to “publicly communicate” obscene material. The legislation defines that phrase to mean: “[D]isplay, post, exhibit, give away or vocalize material in such a way that the material may be readily and distinctly perceived by the public at large by normal unaided vision or hearing.”

House Bill 136 – Gender identity-definition repeal: Sponsored by Rep. Hornok, HB 136 sought to repeal the definition of gender identity from the education section of state statutes. 

That definition is: “as stated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. A person’s gender identity can be shown by providing evidence, including but not limited to medical history, care or treatment of the gender identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender identity or the evidence that the gender identity is sincerely held, part of a person’s core identity and not being asserted for an improper purpose.”

House Bill 156 – Best interests of a child-gender affirming treatments: Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (R-Cody) sponsored this bill.

It would have added specific language to several parts of Wyoming statute stating: “To the extent applicable, in determining the best interests of the child under this article, there shall be a conclusive presumption that it is not in the best interests of the child to undergo any gender transition or gender reassignment procedures.”

That includes hormones and puberty-blocking medications.

For more legislative coverage click here.

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