Somewhere on a long ago thread, I read that the feds were supposed to relinquish most of the federal lands when the territories officially became states.
It’s amazing to me, that the feds are allowed to own more than 50% of the land in any state.
That's a legal argument Cliven Bundy made in court, based upon Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 44 U.S. 3 How. 212 212 (1845), in which the U.S. Supreme Court addressed lands ceded to the United States from Virginia and Georgia to discharge debt incurred by those states during the Revolutionary War. The USSC ruled that that the United States held this land in trust for the establishment of future states.
Subsequently, federal courts have ruled that Pollard's Lessee was based on the fact that Virginia and Georgia were sovereign entities before becoming states, and specifically ruled in four cases that it did not apply to land in the State of Nevada, because the U.S. owned the land before Nevada became a state.