Appeals court upholds Native American Medicine Wheel.A federal appeals court ruled in September that a logging company did not have grounds to challenge government regulations preserving for religious purposes a site in Bighorn National Forest Bighorn National Forest is entirely in Wyoming, United States and consists of over 1.1 million acres (4,500 km²). Created as a US Forest Reserve in 1897, it is one of the oldest government-protected forest lands in the U.S. that is sacred to Native Americans. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Wyoming Sawmills v. United States Forest Service “USFS” redirects here. For the figure skating organization, see U.S. Figure Skating. The USDA Forest Service is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's national forests and national grasslands. that the logging company failed to show how its First Amendment rights had been subverted by the Forest Service's management of Medicine Wheel, which is a stone circle sacred to several Native American tribes located on Medicine Mountain in the national forest in north central Wyoming. The Medicine Wheel was made a national historic landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, site, structure, or object, almost always within the United States, officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance. in 1969 to preserve the prehistoric pre·his·tor·ic also pre·his·tor·i·cal adj. 1. Of, relating to, or belonging to the era before recorded history. 2. Of or relating to a language before it is first recorded in writing. stone circle, which is about 80 feet in diameter, and the Forest Service oversees the landmark to "ensure that the Medicine Wheel and Medicine Mountain are managed in a manner that protects the integrity of the site as a sacred site and a nationally important traditional cultural property." The Wyoming logging company, which has been the primary purchaser of timber from the Bighorn Bighorn, river, United States Bighorn, river, 461 mi (741 km) long, formed in W central Wyo. by the confluence of the Wind and Pop Agie rivers and flowing north to join the Yellowstone River in S Mont. Forest for more than 30 years, sued the Forest Service arguing that its management decisions violated church-state separation. The logging company's lawsuit also complained of economic damage resulting from restricted logging in A colloquial term for the process of making the initial record of the names of individuals who have been brought to the police station upon their arrest. The process of logging in is also called booking. the area surrounding medicine wheel. "As an artificial person, plaintiff has not shown how it experienced the kind of constitutional injury that has been found in such cases," the 10th Circuit ruled. "Instead, its arguments repeatedly refer to and rely on the alleged economic injury." |
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