WASHINGTON >> A plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.

Lee, R-Utah, has proposed selling millions of acres of public lands in the West to states or other entities for use as housing or infrastructure. The plan would revive a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House earlier this year.

The proposal received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, called it problematic in her state because of the close relationship residents have with public lands.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, voiced qualified support.

“On a piece-by-piece basis where states have the opportunity to craft policies that make sense ... we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,” he said at a news conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the Western Governors’ Association was meeting.

Lee, in a post on X Monday night, said he would keep trying. “Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that,” he wrote, adding that a revised plan would remove all U.S. Forest Service land from possible sale.

Sales of sites controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would be significantly reduced, Lee said, so that only land within 5 miles of population centers could be sold.

Environmental advocates celebrated the ruling late Monday by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, but cautioned that Lee’s proposal was far from dead.

“This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society. “Our public lands are not for sale.”

Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, called the procedural ruling in the Senate “an important victory in the fight to protect America’s public lands from short-sighted proposals that would have undermined decades of bipartisan work to protect, steward and expand access to the places we all share.

“This threat is far from over. Efforts to dismantle our public lands continue, and we must remain vigilant as proposals now under consideration,” including plans to roll back the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act and cut funding for land and water conservation, make their way through Congress, she said.