Wild Horses Couldn't Drag the Government to Act

By law, the federal government is supposed to manage the wild horse population in the West. But what happens if, despite an overabundance of the beautiful beasts, the government does nothing about it? The official answer is not much, according to a federal appeals court that turned down Wyoming’s challenge to federal inaction. The decision follows familiar principles of deference to agency action (or, in this case, inaction). But it leaves farmers or others negatively affected by the overpopulation with essentially no recourse, a result that seems at odds with the intent of the law.

Wyoming v. Department of the Interior -- which I like to think of as the "All the Pretty Horses" case -- arose under the wonderfully named Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, enacted by Congress in 1971. (I’m happy to admit that I had never heard of this law before, but just reading the name in the opinion made me feel that I love my job.) The law was enacted to protect wild horses from “capture, branding, harassment, or death.” It designates the wild horses as an “integral part of the natural system of the public lands” and assigns responsibility for them to the Bureau of Land Management.