The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is at the confluence of the Klamath, Cascade and Siskiyou mountains and straddles the Oregon-California border.

MEDFORD — Jackson County commissioners are joining with as many as 15 other “O&C counties” in western Oregon to ask the U.S. Supreme Court whether President Barack Obama overstepped his authority when he expanded the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in 2017.

The request, which is an appeal of earlier appellate court rulings, might be filed as soon as next month with the high court, which is expected to consider it early next year, according to Doug Robertson, executive director of the Association of O&C Counties.

Robertson on Monday said the expansion of the monument was “a clear executive overreach,” and that the court might want to weigh in.

“We are proceeding with an effort to achieve a hearing before the Supreme Court,” Robertson said in a telephone interview. “I think the Supreme Court has expressed interest basically in the overreach of the executive branch.”

Robertson was contacted after the commissioners voted unanimously in September to deposit $48,360 into an association litigation fund. If the court declines to hear the appeal, much of that money is expected to be returned.

The county has contributed to the fund over the years. The fund was started in 2015, with counties contributing over the years as the monument expansion case and a related case concerning a 2016 federal Bureau of Land Management forest management plan wound through lower courts.

The parties to the litigation included the association and the American Forest Resource Council against the U.S. Department of Justice and the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council of Ashland.

The association and American Forest Resource Council initially won at the federal district court level in 2019, but a three-judge appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., ruled unanimously in July that the president was within his authority to expand the monument and that the Bureau of Land Management was within its authority to set aside reserves where logging was not permitted. It’s that appellate court ruling that is being taken to the Supreme Court’s doorstep.

In a separate case brought by Murphy Co. of Oregon, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April that the expansion of the monument was within presidential authority. The company asked for a rehearing, but was denied in August. The company, which has plants in Jackson County, had appealed after losing at the federal district court level in Medford.

The monument, located at the junction of the Cascade, Klamath and Siskiyou mountains east and south of Ashland, was created in 2000 by proclamation of President Bill Clinton before it was expanded in 2017 by Obama. The monument originally included 52,947 acres of federal land, but was expanded by 47,600 federal acres by Obama.

The association maintains that the Oregon and California Lands Act of 1937, which calls for the logging of certain federal forestland known as O&C lands, trumps the Antiquities Act of 1906 that Obama acted under to expand the monument.

“The O&C Act is legislative,” Robertson said. “The presidential use of the Antiquities Act has overridden Congress’s act.”

Roberts, the board chair, said the county loses revenue when O&C lands are not logged. Under the O&C Act, certain counties share in revenue generated by the sale of timber.

“All 18 O&C counties lose monies when O&C lands are not managed under the sustained yield management principles,” she wrote in a reply to a request for comment.

In a related matter, commissioners in an August letter to the Bureau of Land Management said that the agency’s planned update of a monument management plan should be put on hold pending the outcome of the litigation.

“In regards to the O&C lands court decision, we believe that until the dust settles in court, that there is not much to gain in planning for a new (management plan),” the commissioners wrote. “We believe that the (plan) must include compliance with the requirements of the O&C Act including sustainable yield harvest.”

Commissioners also asked that logging be used in the monument to reduce the risk of wildfire. Roberts said fuels-reduction programs such as prescribed burning cost the agency money, while logging brings in revenue.

“The BLM never has enough money nor manpower to manage all of the federal lands (and reduce fire risk),” she wrote. “Commercial harvest receipts help manage lands while providing financial benefits.”

Dave Willis, chairman of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council, faulted commissioners for pursuing the litigation.

“Jackson County commissioners pledging 40-plus-thousand of our local tax dollars to pay lawyers to attack the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is a classic case of misspent public funds,” he wrote in an emailed response to a request for comment. “The monument is a national treasure for present and future generations. It shouldn’t be sold out for short-term profit.

“The industrial logging lobby lost their case against the monument expansion in both the 9th Circuit Court and D.C. Circuit Court — and they lost long ago in Oregon’s court of public opinion. I wish our commissioners were more forward-thinking.”