The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled on Friday that the Bureau of Land Management broke the law during a wild horse round up in 2014 in an area southeast of Rock Springs known as the Checkerboard.
The Checkerboard gets its name from its alternating patches of public and private lands. Bill Eubanks, who represented the plaintiff -- mostly wild horse advocacy groups -- explained in a press release that this ruling prevents the BLM from treating public lands as private land in Checkerboard areas, making the wild horse roundup procedure more complicated.
Today's ruling reversed the 2015 decision by the lower court to uphold the actions of the BLM's 2014 roundup.
The plaintiffs had also recently filed an additional lawsuit to keep the BLM from doing a similar roundup of about 500 wild horses next week in the Checkerboard. The ruling from the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals may also work to halt the roundup.