Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the BlueRibbon Coalition fighting for your access to your public lands. Ahead of that important milestone, I am honored to announce the creation of the Brass Legal Center at the BlueRibbon Coalition. This is a first for BRC. In the past, we have sometimes used private lawyers to litigate our cases. But private lawyers are expensive—really expensive, which can work for the big fights but never works for the little ones. We care about all the fights.
In recent years, we have relied on a single staff attorney. Staff attorneys work better. Indeed, BRC’s current staff attorney, Bella Eldridge, has been doing terrific work the past few years, and she will be integral to the new Legal Center. But a staff attorney is just one person. A legal center means a team of attorneys who are dedicated to one cause: keeping public lands open to the public.
The Board of Directors has asked me to serve as General Counsel for the Center–and for BRC generally–and I could not be more excited to do so. I have been litigating for over 20 years. Eighteen of those years have been in public interest litigation, suing all levels of government to defend individual rights and the Constitution. I have been on the BRC Board of Directors since 2023, and I currently serve as lead attorney on the cases to re-open over 300 miles near Moab and challenge the creation of the Chuckwalla National Monument.
I have also been overlanding all around the American West for over two decades. Together with my friends and family, I have explored many thousands of miles of trail and camped at hundreds of campsites. I love our public lands just as much as you do. The Board thought I was the right person for this job and, and I hope to prove them right. We will be building on Bella's work these past few years, along with the partnership between BRC and the Texas Public Policy Foundation on the Moab and Chuckwalla cases.
The Legal Center is named after Richard “Dick” Brass, a passionate dirt bike enthusiast who is well known to many in the Utah dirt bike community. We will be telling Dick’s story in the near future. He lived an extraordinary life. And that is why we were honored and humbled when he left BRC with a generous donation from his estate after his passing. These funds made it possible to take this step. He also established a standard of excellence that we will carry forward into the work we do at the legal center that bears his name.
So what does this all mean? At rock bottom, it means that BRC will be able to be involved in more fights for access to public lands around the country. As I mentioned, we care about all the fights, big and small. For a local club, the closure of a 20-mile local trail can matter more than the closure of 300 miles of trails around Moab. We get it. We love our secret spots, too. With a growing team of attorneys, we will be able to take on more fights to keep trails open, and to develop the institutional expertise to ensure that BRC is able to continue this work for the next 40 years. There is an entire ecosystem of NGOs, media, and government bureaucrats that is dedicated to keeping people out of our public lands. We need to fight back even harder, or they will close off more of it every year until you are only allowed to go where they tell you to go–and even then, only if you are lucky enough to win that year’s lottery.
We reject that vision of public lands. We believe that you do belong in the great outdoors, and that the ability to explore and adventure in America’s vast backcountry is your birthright. And we know, better than anyone, that the fight for public lands is ongoing on all levels. We are indebted to Dick Brass for giving us the seed money to undertake this next step in BRC’s growth, and we hope that you will join him in supporting this effort. In exchange, we promise to always fight for your access to public lands and to stand athwart the relentless push to close them off to human activity. We promise to tell you the truth; to be transparent about what is happening and how our work is making a difference. And we promise to pursue a standard of rigor and excellence that would make Dick Brass proud.
The Brass Legal Center at the BlueRibbon Coalition is open for business. Join us in this important work.
— Matt Miller, General Counsel, Brass Legal Center at BlueRibbon Coalition
