Republican senators approved a plan Monday to add two justices to the Utah Supreme Court, arguing it would help the court handle cases more efficiently and expeditiously, although critics say it’s a politically motivated move to shift the ideology of a court who’s handed the Legislature a series of high-profile defeats in recent years.
The Senate passed the expansion on a 21-8 vote, with all but one Republican member — Sen. Evan Vickers, R-St. George — voting for the bill and all of the Democrats, as well as Sen. Emily Buss of the Utah Forward Party, voting against it.
It now goes to the House of Representatives, where it has the backing of Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and others. Gov. Spencer Cox also supports the expansion and included it in his proposed budget.
Senate Majority Whip Chris Wilson, R-Logan, the sponsor of the bill, said that last year the Supreme Court issued 58 opinions, below the average of 72 over the last 20 years. (There were actually 61 opinions issued in 2025.)
Wilson said he has heard from friends who are attorneys that it sometimes takes three years or more for a case to make its way through the Supreme Court. In addition, he said, the 10 states closest to Utah in terms of population all have between seven and nine justices on their high court, while Utah’s has remained at five since 1917.
“I think it’s obvious, in my opinion, that the Utah Supreme Court needs additional resources,” he said.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Highland, listens as the Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Justice Committee hears SB136, a bill that looks to ban law enforcement, including federal immigration officers, from wearing face coverings in Utah, at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026.
Pleasant Grove Republican Sen. Brady Brammer, an attorney, said that the court’s overall productivity has “dropped substantially since 2022,” which means delays for parties waiting to have a case heard.
“Oftentimes, [that means] criminal defendants sitting in jail waiting for their appeal to be heard, or civil defendants whose businesses are on the line, they’re waiting and waiting. Waiting years and years,” he said.
But Democratic Sen. Stephanie Pitcher, also an attorney, said the backlog is at the lower court level, where judges are overworked. If lawmakers want to speed up the process, she said, that is where the Legislature should focus resources.
According to the latest report from the Utah courts system, the data shows that “while the Supreme Court continues to dispose of cases faster than historically, it is deciding fewer cases.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. Stephanie Pitcher, D-Salt Lake City, speaks as the Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Justice Committee hears SB136, a bill that looks to ban law enforcement, including federal immigration officers, from wearing face coverings in Utah, at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026.
Lower court judges, meanwhile, have an average caseload that is 109% the optimal size and those in the busiest districts have 130% of the standard caseload. The courts asked for eight additional judges at the district and juvenile court levels. At the end of 2024, the courts reported, there was a backlog of more than 8,000 cases at the district level.
Wilson’s bill would add three district court judges and two judges to the Utah Court of Appeals.
“We were listening to the judiciary and trying to … look for systemwide help with the judiciary,” Wilson said. The Senate-passed expansion would cost taxpayers more than $6 million.
At the same time, the courts are being asked to reduce their budgets by 5%, as are all state agencies. Among the items on the chopping block would be a reduction of 25 judicial assistants, according to a presentation of options at a meeting last week of the Utah Judicial Council — the body that oversees the courts. That would leave the court system 60 judicial assistants short of what it says are needed.
Pitcher and others have said that Republicans are actually interested in adding justices to the Utah Supreme Court to change the balance of a court that has regularly ruled against the GOP agenda.
In recent years, the courts have ruled that Utah’s school voucher program is unconstitutional, blocked the enactment of a near-total ban on abortion, held up a law intended to bar transgender girls from playing high school sports and struck down the congressional boundaries drawn by Republican lawmakers as an illegal gerrymander that disenfranchised Democratic voters.
Last year, the Legislature voted to strip the justices of their ability to choose their own chief justice, giving that power to the governor. Republican lawmakers also passed a resolution condemning the courts for judicial activism, focused primarily on the redistricting rulings.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. Chris Wilson, R-Logan, presents SB134, a bill that increases the number of judges on the Utah Supreme Court justices to seven on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026.
Wilson said he is not aiming to “pack” the court and noted that, if his bill becomes law, the two additional justices will be appointed through the same process as the five who are currently serving.
Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton, acknowledged that “there is some politics” in judicial decisions. People who don’t get their way in the legislative process, he said, “want the courts to weigh in in a partisan way.”
“We need to do our best to make sure that the judiciary is not the person that’s making the laws, that the judiciary is just checking us against the Constitution,” he said.
A new poll commissioned by Better Boundaries, a group that pushed a 2018 ballot initiative that banned partisan gerrymandering, found that two-thirds of Republicans, 69% of unaffiliated voters and nearly three-fourths of Democrats believe the Legislature’s move to expand the Supreme Court is driven by politics, not efficiency.
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