In 2011, a federal appeals court in Denver, Colorado upheld the government’s authority to prohibit Western states from building roads on public land. The unanimous ruling, issued by a three-judge panel, said a lower court had erred in finding for the State of Wyoming, the plaintiff in the case, and ordered that the rule be put into force nationally. Wyoming had argued that preventing road construction into or on national forests or other lands is a de facto wilderness designation, something that only Congress can do, and that the Forest Service had exceeded its own authority in trying to put the system into effect. "The Forest Service did not usurp Congressional authority because the roadless rule did not establish de facto wilderness," the court said in a decision written by Judge Jerome A. Holmes, who was nominated to the court by President George W. Bush.