The U.S. Supreme Court case Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, et al. v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance et al., 2003 revolved around a dispute over land use in Utah's wilderness areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) claimed that BLM was not fulfilling its legal obligation to protect these lands from environmental harm caused by off-road vehicles and other human activities as per Section 706(1) of Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which allows courts to "compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed". However, the court ruled in favor of Gale Norton and BLM stating that SUWA failed to identify any specific statutory provision mandating an action on part of BLM that it had failed to take. Furthermore, they clarified that APA’s legislative history indicates “agency action” refers only to discrete actions legally required rather than programmatic management decisions at large.

In the dissenting opinion for Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, et al. v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance et al., Justice Ginsburg disagreed with the majority's interpretation of Section 706(1) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). She argued that this section should be understood to allow courts to compel agencies to act when they have unreasonably delayed in carrying out a clear statutory duty. In her view, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had indeed failed in its legal obligation under Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), which requires it to prevent unnecessary or undue degradation on public lands by off-road vehicles. The BLM’s failure was not due simply to resource constraints but also because it did not take seriously enough its responsibilities under FLPMA and APA. Therefore, she believed that judicial intervention was warranted in this case.