Two more Utah Supreme Court justices after Legislature — sore from legal losses — passes expansion

Two new justices will join the Utah Supreme Court after the Legislature, bitter from repeated legal defeats, passed a bill to expand the state’s high court from five to seven members.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who will nominate the two new justices, quickly signed the bill into law, his office announced Saturday. After filling the new seats, Cox will have appointed five of the seven justices.

“I would err on the side that seven sets of eyes reviewing the most complex and difficult issues our state has ever faced is better than having only five sets of eyes,” said House Majority Leader Casey Snider, R-Paradise, a sponsor of the expansion.

Snider, who said he is “thankful for the men and women” who serve on the court, also sponsored a resolution during a special session in December that “condemns the Utah Supreme Court’s activist rewriting of the Utah Constitution” in a challenge to the state’s congressional districts.

The co-sponsor of that condemnation, Senate Majority Whip Chris Wilson, R-Logan, also sponsored SB134 to expand the court.

In addition to dealing the Legislature a crushing blow in the redistricting challenge, the courts have, in recent years, blocked Utah’s ban on most abortions, temporarily stopped a law banning transgender girls from playing high school sports, and found the state’s school voucher program unconstitutional.

Snider argued the bill would give the court additional resources to help resolve cases faster and would also provide additional judges to lower courts — two for the Court of Appeals and three at the district court level.

Wilson has previously said it’s not his aim to “pack” the court and noted that, under SB134, the two additional justices will be appointed through the same process as the five who are currently serving.

More resources, but where?

The Utah Judicial Council had asked the Legislature for five district court judges, two juvenile court judges, an appeals court judge and two court commissioners, as well as funding additional clerks, parole officers, judicial assistants and other administrative staff to help alleviate the backlog at the lower courts.

Last year, the council reported, some district court judges had caseloads that were 130% of the optimal level and a backlog of more than 8,000 cases. Chief Justice Matthew Durrant told the Legislature on the opening day of the session that the Supreme Court had “essentially no backlog” and urged lawmakers not to expand the Supreme Court at the expense of those other needs.

The court expansion bill is projected to cost about $6.7 million in the first year and $4.7 million each year after.

“We have a huge backlog in our district courts,” said Rep. Andrew Stoddard, D-Midvale, an attorney who argued against the Supreme Court expansion. “We do not have a backlog in our appellate courts and especially not in the Supreme Court.”

The Utah State Bar also opposes expanding the Supreme Court and other bills that it said would “fundamentally remake the state’s judicial system.”

Rep. Candice Pierucci, R-Herriman, argues that Utah’s Supreme Court has had five justices since 1917, while the state’s population has grown from around 400,000 people to 3.5 million.

Part of that calculation was accounted for in 1987, when the Legislature created the seven-judge Court of Appeals to alleviate the strain by handling appeals that previously went directly to the Utah Supreme Court.

Before that, the Supreme Court sometimes issued more than 300 rulings a year. Last year, it issued 61.

Former Associate Chief Justice John Pearce, who retired from the court in December, said the justices hear cases when they’re ready to be argued, but the chokepoint is further downstream in the process. Adding justices at the top, he warned, could be detrimental.

“If we’re looking to increase judicial efficiency, it’s completely the wrong answer,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune last month. “Adding justices to the court would have a negative impact on the number of cases the court hears.”

Matthew Brogdon, senior director of the Center of Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University, said, in the federal courts, every time the courts have been expanded, it was done to serve the political interests of the party in control of Congress.

Each time the courts are expanded, he said, they become more and more powerful.

“Even though this [expansion] might serve some partisan interest,” he said, “the short-term political interests might not line up with the long-term institutional interests.”

Two states — Georgia and Arizona — expanded their high courts in 2016, both the result of an effort by Republican legislators to change the makeup of the courts from Democrat-leaning to Republican-leaning.

In the years since, the Arizona court has issued slightly more rulings — about 44 a year. The number of rulings annually from the Georgia court has decreased.

More changes ahead?

The court expansion bill is one of several pieces of legislation aimed at overhauling the courts.

• HB392, which would create a new three-judge Constitutional Court to hear challenges to laws passed by the Legislature, has passed committee and is awaiting a vote in the House. The judges who would hear the cases would be chosen by Cox and confirmed by the Senate.

• HB262 would require judges to get two-thirds of the vote in their retention elections to remain on the bench.

• HB274, would remove defense attorneys and add prosecutors to the Utah Sentencing Commission, which sets penalties for crimes. The bill, sponsored by House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, is awaiting a House vote.

• HJR5 seeks to amend the Utah Constitution to allow the governor to nominate anyone he wants to fill a court vacancy and not be limited by recommendations from the Judicial Nominating Commission.

• HJR13 is a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the Legislature to force a judge to an immediate retention election if lawmakers believe the judge is “incompetent” or has overstepped the court’s authority.

These bills come after the Legislature last year stripped the justices of the power to choose their own chief justice and gave that to the governor.

“While each proposal is presented as a narrow change, together these bills operate as an overhaul to how judges are appointed, retained and pressured while on the bench,” the Utah Bar said in opposing the legislation. “The combined effect weakens long-standing safeguards that protect judges from political retribution and undermines the public’s right to a judiciary that upholds the rule of law without favor.”

Earlier this week, the Brennan Center for Justice featured Utah as one of the states that had proposed some of the most sweeping legislation attacking the independence of the judiciary in 2025.

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