Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange is pushing back against an environmental regulation that he argues is too restrictive and overreaching. The rule, which went into effect in March, aimed to create new protections for the habitats of certain endangered species, though Strange says its broad language could actually harm land owners.

The Yellowhammer State and seventeen others have now joined together in a lawsuit against the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Opponents of the rule say it allows the federal government “to designate areas as occupied critical habitat, containing the physical and biological features essential to conservation, even when those areas are neither occupied nor contain those features.” Additionally, the suit itself states that “if allowed to stand, the [rules] would allow the Services to exercise virtually unlimited power to declare land and water critical habitat for endangered and threatened species.”

“Washington bureaucrats have gone beyond common sense by seeking to expand their control to private property adjoining the habitat of an endangered species solely on the basis that these areas might one day be home to a threatened species,” said Attorney General Strange. “If this rule is unchallenged, there could be no limit to their regulatory reach, potentially setting the stage for the federal government to designate entire states or even multiple states as habitat for a particular species.”

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday. Included among the states fighting against the rule are Arkansas, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.