Obama administration lawyers on Tuesday dropped their appeal of a federal court ruling that said the Interior Department was wrong to remove the site of the Blair Mountain labor battle from the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
Department of Justice lawyers, representing Interior's National Park Service and the Keeper of the National Register filed a motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia asking to voluntarily withdraw their appeal.
In April, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton had granted a motion for summary judgment sought by a coalition of environmental and historic preservation groups that challenged a decision by state officials and the federal government that Blair Mountain should be delisted. Walton said that the determination to delist Blair Mountain - made at the urging of a lawyer for coal companies that own potential mining sites in the area - violated federal law, in part because it was based on "very little, if any, indicia of reasoned decision making."
Tom Crosson, a spokesman for the park service, said that the agency had decided to accept the district court's ruling and revisit its December 2009 decision to delist Blair Mountain.
The legal fight traces its roots to the late August and early September 1921 "armed conflict between coal miners and strikebreakers" during the United Mine Workers efforts to unionize West Virginia's southern coalfields.