“In just days or even hours, the federal government plans to complete an illegal land swap, setting in motion the irreversible destruction of a long-protected Native American sacred site that will end core Apache religious practices forever,” the petition reads.

“This Court now has an opportunity—likely its last—to prevent this generational tragedy.”

The petitioners claim the land transfer “violates federal law at every turn,” invoking the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the free exercise clause of the Constitution as reasons that turning the religious site into a mine would harm their right to worship at Oak Flat.

“The United States Government has a tragic history of destroying Apache lives and lands for the sake of mining interests,” the petition reads. “The Apaches simply ask that the land not be transferred beyond federal control and destroyed before the courts (including this Court) resolve their claims.”

In a pair of letters to the Supreme Court after the Apache activists filed their emergency petition, both the Justice Department and lawyers for the mining company urged the high court to deny the bid to halt the land transfer. Both parties claim the land transfer has already occurred and that the Supreme Court intervening in the case would either reverse the transfer or tell the mining company it may not use its newly acquired land pending a full case at the high court.

“This Court should not force Resolution to incur millions of dollars more in unrecoverable losses—and miners in rural Arizona should not once again face threats to their livelihoods—through an administrative injunction when this appeal no longer presents a live case or controversy and raises meritless claims,” Michael Huston, a lawyer for Resolution Copper Mining, said in a letter to the high court.

SUPREME COURT REJECTS PETITION FROM APACHES TO PROTECT RELIGIOUS SITE

The petition marks the second time the issue of the Oak Flat land transfer has made its way to the Supreme Court, after the high court declined a case brought by a different group of Apache activists in May 2025. The justices rejected the bid to hear the case 6-2, with Justice Samuel Alito taking no part in the consideration of the petition. Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a scathing dissent to the rejection, which was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, decrying the high court’s decision not to hear the case as a “grave mistake.”

The group that had attempted to have the Supreme Court halt the land transfer last year asked the justices to reconsider their decision shortly afterward, but the high court again denied their bid to hear the case in October 2025, with Gorsuch again saying he would have taken up the case.