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The event ended without violence. Word of the Jefferson Canyon Road affair spread quickly through the West and immediately drew the ire of the Justice Department. The government filed its lawsuit against the county in March. Says defense attorney Marzulla: "I think they thought it was a bunch of crackpots and they would squash them to the ground. What they did not plan on is that they would get a massive, substantial and competent defense of this case."
"That's nonsense," says Peter Coppelman, the Justice Department's Deputy Assistant Attorney General for environment and natural resources, who argued the case in July before an overflowing courtroom. "We picked Nye for one reason only: Nye was actively defying federal authority and creating potentially violent situations, sending letters threatening to arrest federal employees who were simply doing their jobs. We didn't pick Nye. Nye picked us."
HISTORY RUNS THROUGH THE CASE LIKE A strand of barbed wire. Briefs for both sides cite the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, through which the U.S. acquired much of the West from Mexico, as if it were signed yesterday. Distilled to its bare essence, Nye County's argument is this: Under the "equal footing" doctrine, new states admitted to the Union were to enter with all the dignity and sovereignty of the original 13. By retaining so much of Nevada's land, the government gave it second-class status, in violation of the equal-footing doctrine. Says Marzulla: "The Constitution simply does not allow the Federal Government to hold in perpetuity one-third of the landmass of the U.S."
The government counters that the equal-footing doctrine was meant only to ensure that each state would have equal political standing in Washington; it argues, further, that Nevada, as a condition of its entry into the Union in 1864, explicitly gave up all rights to the lands within its proposed boundaries. "Legally, the county-supremacy arguments are completely bogus, but politically, they're very potent," says Justice attorney Coppelman. "What Dick Carver basically does is carry a copy of the Constitution in his pocket, and he just whips it out and waves it around when you ask what's the authority for the county-supremacy ordinances. He just says, 'Here it is.' And until we get a court to specifically reject those arguments, we're going to have people believing they have some legal validity."
And that, he says, has meant danger for federal officials throughout the West. "Whenever you have an enforcement officer confronted by a citizen who refuses to comply with legal requirements, you have the potential for violence. So this is definitely a very volatile situation."
Other counties that have passed rebel ordinances are watching the Nye case closely. A decision favoring Nye, although subject to immediate appeal, could cause a dramatic increase in the rebellion's popularity. But a decision against the county, considered far more likely, might deepen the rebels' already profound alienation.