A federal court order on Monday brought operations to a halt at the highly valuable Colosseum Mine in California’s Mojave Desert, interrupting work tied to gold and rare-earth minerals at the contested site.
The ruling marks a major turn in a heated legal fight over the historic mine, which President Trump had viewed as part of a broader push to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign supplies of critical minerals. The mine’s owners and the administration faced off against conservation groups that argued renewed exploration threatened lasting environmental damage.
“I just was hoping for sort of an even-handed look at the actual law, but it seems to be an ideologically driven decision,” Stephen Baghdadi, CEO of mine owner Dateline Resources, told the California Post.
Baghdadi said he was “shocked” that the judge ruled in favor of the National Parks Conservation Association, which filed suit against the Trump administration in April over activity at the Mojave National Preserve site.
The White House had cleared Dateline to restart work at the mine, a move conservationists warned could inflict irreparable harm. They also argued that any renewed operations required fresh approval from the National Park Service.
The Department of Justice countered that the mine’s operating plan had already been approved by the Bureau of Land Management in 1985, years before the Mojave National Preserve was created under the 1994 California Desert Protection Act. That earlier approval, the government argued, gave Dateline “valid existing rights” to continue lawful operations.
U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder disagreed, finding that Dateline must secure updated authorization from the National Park Service before continuing work inside the preserve.
“The decision to allow Colosseum Rare Metals to operate within Mojave National Preserve without an approval by NPS is contrary to law,” Snyder wrote in her order.
The preliminary injunction was a setback for Trump, who has sought to reduce America’s reliance on China for rare-earth minerals.
“You had people that were just stopping it. They were using the environment to stop all of these things,” Trump said Friday of the Colisseum during a broader roundtable on American mining.
Monday’s decision requires Dateline to halt operations immediately and gives the company up to 10 weeks to safely secure the site and demobilize its drill rigs, equipment and personnel.
The injunction will remain in effect while the lawsuit proceeds unless Dateline obtains the required NPS authorization or successfully challenges the order.
