A US Republican congressman has introduced legislation aimed at overturning a Biden administration decision that restricted mining across a large area of northern Minnesota, reopening a long-running political battle over access to critical minerals in the US.

Pete Stauber on Monday introduced H.J. Res. 140, a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution seeking to nullify a 20-year mineral withdrawal imposed in 2023 over about 91 000 ha of the Superior National Forest. The area covers part of the Duluth Complex, a large undeveloped copper/nickel deposit.

“The Biden Administration’s decision to enact its illegal mining ban in Northern Minnesota was not only an attack on our way of life and cost countless good-paying, union jobs, it also put our nation’s mineral security at risk,” Stauber said in a statement accompanying the resolution.

The mineral withdrawal, formalised through Public Land Order 7917 by the Department of the Interior, effectively barred new mining and resource extraction activities in the region for two decades. The Biden administration argued at the time that the move was necessary to protect water quality and sensitive ecosystems near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Stauber, however, said the decision locked away a strategically important domestic source of copper and nickel, increasing US dependence on foreign suppliers, including China, at a time of rising demand for critical minerals used in energy transition technologies and defence applications.

By using the CRA, Congress can review and overturn federal actions within 60 Senate session days of their formal submission to lawmakers. Stauber’s office said the mineral withdrawal only became eligible for review after the Trump administration recently transmitted the public land order to Congress, arguing that the Biden administration had failed to do so when the ban was first enacted.

If approved by both chambers of Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, the resolution would nullify the withdrawal and prevent future administrations from implementing a “substantially similar” ban under the CRA’s provisions.

“I am proud to stand with the hardworking men and women of Northern Minnesota and protect our region’s way of life and our rich, 145-year mining history,” Stauber said, adding that he was seeking swift congressional consideration of the measure.

National Mining Association CEO Rich Nolan welcomed the move. “We are in a global race to build out the technologies, data centres and energy resources that will drive the future, yet our abundant domestic supplies of the minerals needed to do so are handcuffed by the prior administration’s groundless land withdrawals. Hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands in Minnesota – and elsewhere across the US – containing everything from copper to nickel and cobalt, were closed off to responsible domestic mining, putting our supply chains at risk and costing Americans much-needed jobs.

"Global events have shown these dated policies to be both unworkable and a risk to our economic security; we applaud Rep. Stauber for working to reverse them to ensure what’s made in America is also mined in America.”