The Renaming of Lake Ontario is Even More Illegal Than I Originally Realized

In my Verdict column on Monday, I explained why a lawsuit under the Administrative Procedure Act by either New York State or a business that faces financial harm could succeed in blocking the official changing of the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. In an accompanying blog post that same day, I responded to counter-arguments that I anticipated the government would make if faced with such a lawsuit. Today I follow up by explaining that a lawsuit is now ripe and would be even stronger than I originally suggested.

As I noted in the Verdict column, when the Secretary of the Interior and the Board of Geographic Names (BGN) changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, they failed to give effect to any of the considerations that, by law, it is supposed to take into account. Instead, they relied on a BGN policy that exempts geographic names chosen by the President from the ordinary procedures and considerations. However, the BGN had no authority to adopt a policy that supersedes the statutory framework created by Congress. Thus, that name change was unlawful and could have been (and still can be) challenged.

I assumed that the BGN would change the name of Lake Ontario using the same expedited and unlawful process that it used for the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, what appears to have happened is even more illegal. Here is the sequence of events:

August 27: Trump issues Executive Order (EO) 14422 directing the Secretary of the Interior "in coordination with the Board on Geographic Names" to change the name to Lake America. 

August 27 (later in the day): Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issues a Secretarial Order, SO 3453, the operative provision of which states: "The BGN is ordered to immediately take all actions necessary to rename the feature currently known as Lake Ontario to Lake America, including updating the Geographic Names Information System" (GNIS).

August 27 (still that same day): The GNIS is updated to reflect the new name

Notice what apparently did not happen between the Secretary's order to the BGN and the updating of the name: the BGN did not take any action, and yet the lake's name was changed in the GNIS anyway, presumably by professional staff. But on what authority?

My research indicates that the usual procedure is for the BGN to make substantive decisions on name changes, which are then implemented by staff. The BGN is part of the US Geological Survey, which is in turn part of the Department of the Interior, so it's possible that the staffer responsible for updating the GNIS figured that an order from the Secretary to the BGN to do what the BGN would inevitably do (in light of its policy with respect to names chosen by the President) was effectively an order to the staffer. That would be highly irregular and contrary to both law and usual practice but it's probably what happened.

The only other possibility is that, despite the complete absence of any public record of having done so, the BGN briefly met (perhaps via Zoom or telephone) and rubber-stamped Secretary Burgum's decision in between his having issued SO 3453 and the change to the GNIS. I suppose it's possible--though it very much strains credulity--that during such a brief meeting, the BGN could have considered the interests of the public and state agencies, as required by statute, and nonetheless concluded that renaming Lake Ontario was a good idea. I thus tried to find out.

Yesterday morning and then again several times throughout the day, I called the only phone number publicly available for the Domestic Names Committee of the BGN. Each time I received a recording saying the phone was busy. I also sent an email at 9:20 am yesterday to Shellie Zahniser, who is listed on the BGN website as the Executive Secretary for Domestic Names. This is the body of what I wrote to Ms. Zahniser:

I am a law professor interested in administrative law. I am trying to determine what formal action the U.S. Board on Geographic Names took concerning the renaming of Lake Ontario as Lake America following the Interior Secretary's Order 3453 of August 27, 2026. I have been unable to find any public indication that the Board took any action; yet the GNIS has been updated to reflect the renaming. Did the Board's Domestic Names Committee meet, vote, or otherwise take formal action concerning the name change? Did the full Board take any formal action? If so, could you please provide (or direct me to publicly available information containing) the date of the action and any minutes, resolution, decision record, or other document memorializing it? If there was no meeting or vote, could you please explain what BGN action or procedure resulted in the Lake America entry being added to the GNIS?Thank you very much for any assistance you can provide.

As of this morning, I have not received a reply. If I do receive one that is remotely responsive, I will post an update.

Where does that leave things?

It turns out I was mistaken in my column and my blog post on Monday in my assertion that it was too early to file a lawsuit. I had assumed the BGN would follow the same unlawful and rushed procedure it had followed in the Gulf of Mexico case, but instead, it appears that the BGN was either completely bypassed (which seems most likely) or acted incredibly swiftly. Either way, it is now open to New York State and any other aggrieved parties to sue the Secretary and/or the BGN.

Beyond that, my original analysis is strengthened. The procedural irregularity in the renaming of Lake Ontario goes beyond what we saw with respect to the Gulf of Mexico--which was itself fatally flawed because the BGN in that case did not give any consideration to the statutory factors. Here, the BGN apparently did not even act.

The most--indeed the only thing--that can be said in favor of what happened here is that it was honest. President Trump issued an unlawful decree, and so a Cabinet Secretary and probably a staffer somewhere in the agency he oversees acted with the utmost alacrity to ensure that Trump's will was carried out without delay, any concerns about the process and relevant considerations mandated by Congress be damned. By contrast with other illegal actions the Trump administration has tried to thinly veil with legal justifications, here there was no pretext that the agency needed to do what it did in order to enforce the Voting Rights Act, to combat the nonexistent flow of fentanyl across the norther border, or to address antisemitism. The rapid unfolding of orders being given and followed is thus bracingly clarifying about the true nature of the Trump regime.

-- Michael C. Dorf