The showdown over guns, though, is not over: A joint motion filed by the U. and the Utah Attorney General's Office to allow weapons on campus also asks to reopen the matter in U.S. District Court to litigate federal constitutional issues.
In the motion, the two sides ask Judge Dale Kimball to delay any action in the case until March 31, in the hope they can reach an out-of-court settlement.
"We're very pleased that the university has agreed to this course of action," Raymond Hintze, chief deputy at the AG's Office, said.
"We think it's the correct thing to do. We think the university and the Legislature need to get together to see if they can resolve the sensitive issue of the way the laws apply to campus." The Utah Supreme Court on Sept. 8 rejected the argument that prohibiting firearms is part of the school's power to control academic affairs, overturing a U. internal policy banning firearms.
That ruling resolved only the state issues involved in the case, sending the case back to Kimball's court.
The issue of whether the state constitution allows schools to set their own firearm policies heated up in 2001, when Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff issued a formal opinion that the U. policy violated a statute forbidding state or local entities from restricting the use of firearms.
The U. challenged that opinion in 2002 with a suit filed in U.S.
District Court that raised both state and federal claims. Kimball declined to decide the federal issues until the school resolved its state claims in a Utah court. The U. then filed a lawsuit in Utah's 3rd District Court. Based on state law at the time, Judge Robert Hilder ruled in 2003 that the gun ban was legal, prompting the Shurtleff's office to appeal to the Supreme Court. In response to Hilder's decision, state lawmakers passed a bill in 2004 that said only they can set gun policy. However, U. trustees then voted unanimously to maintain its policy prohibiting firearms on campus, home to more than 44,000 students, faculty and staff members.
Monday's stipulation says that "although the university desires to maintain a weapon-free campus," it has agreed to a temporary suspension of its internal gun policy.
