Salt Lake City • The Utah Supreme Court tossed out a lawsuit Thursday filed by a Republican candidate trying to overturn the victory of a Navajo commissioner in a county dogged by allegations of discrimination against Navajo voters.
Kelly Laws filed a lawsuit in January 2019, after losing the race to Democrat Willie Grayeyes in San Juan County, claiming that Grayeyes was not truly a Utah resident. A 7th District judge rejected Laws’s claims and ruled he raised his challenge too late.
Citing different logic, Chief Justice Matthew Durrant arrived at the same result, concluding Laws failed to allege “sufficiently particularized injury,” and therefore lacks standing to bring a suit. According to his filings, Laws did not bring the suit as a defeated candidate, but as a registered San Juan County voter who is entitled to a choice between eligible candidates.
“But this injury is not particular to Laws—all registered voters in San Juan County share this same right to participate in lawful elections,” Durrant wrote in the opinion joined by Justice Paige Peterson.
The opinion may have affirmed Grayeyes’ win at the ballot box, but it rejected his demand Laws pay his attorney’s fees. The court found that Laws pursued his lawsuit in good faith, so Grayeyes should not be entitled to recover his legal costs.
Justices Thomas Lee and John Pearce wrote separate concurring opinions, exploring the extent to which private parties may bring actions that enforce a public right.
Citing the same allegations later raised by Laws, San Juan County officials had removed Grayeyes, a staunch advocate for the 2016 Bears Ears National Monument designation, from the ballot before the election. They claimed an investigation sparked by a complaint from a different Republican hopeful alleged that Grayeyes lived primarily on the Arizona portion of the Navajo Reservation. A federal judge reversed that decision after deciding the county clerk falsified the complaint by improperly backdating it. U.S. District Judge David Nuffer did not rule directly on the residency issue, however.
Grayeyes’s supporters have called the residency challenge a political attack leveled just as Navajos were poised to occupy a majority position on the three-member County Commission for the first time. Grayeyes has been registered to vote in San Juan County since he was 18 and held tribal leadership positions in Utah for decades, his lawyers have said.
Laws’ attorney Peter Stirba did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Tribune reporter Brian Maffly contributed to this report.