Environmental group seeks to get Trump's image removed from park passes

The Center for Biological Diversity is asking a judge to find the administration in violation of a law that sets the rules for images on the annual passes.

An environmental group wants President Donald Trump’s image removed from next year's national park passes, and it’s suing to try to make that happen.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Washington, D.C., by the Center for Biological Diversity, cited the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA), saying the law, first enacted in 2004, requires the secretaries of the interior and agriculture to hold an annual photography contest to determine which photo appears on the Annual America the Beautiful Pass.

But on Nov. 25, the federal lawsuit said, the Interior Department announced that next year's pass would bear an image of Trump instead of the winner of this year’s contest: an image of Glacier National Park in Montana.

“The official rules governing the contest require that ‘the photo must be taken on federal public lands or waters’ and any submissions that are ‘are highly controversial, inappropriate, indecent or obscene’ are disqualified. The rules allow disqualification of images that have been ‘noticeably and/or excessively altered,’” attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity wrote in the federal lawsuit.

The winning photo of the National Park Foundation's "Share the Experience" photo contest, by Akshay Joshi.Akshay Joshi / National Park Foundation“The Interior Department’s bait-and-switch betrays the expectations of the thousands of people who participate in the contest and is directly at odds with the public participation mandates of the statute. It also undermines the stability of this well-established program and the conservation, recreational, and educational outcomes FLREA provides,” they added.