As Utah Republicans continue their campaign of reshaping the state’s judicial system this week, longtime conservative commentator Glenn Beck derided them as “hypocrites” and warned it could be the “end of the republic.”
Over the weekend, Gov. Spencer Cox signed into law a bill expanding Utah’s Supreme Court from five justices to seven. It came on the heels of a string of court rulings that struck down laws passed by the Legislature — on issues ranging from abortion to redistricting — as being unconstitutional.
“You see any country that has ever done this, they fall into totalitarianism because they realize they can just change the referees,” Beck said during his podcast Tuesday. “They’ll just add more referees, and they’ll add the referees they like.”
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives approved a second bill Wednesday aiming to clamp down on the judiciary. HB392 would establish a panel of three judges who would hear constitutional challenges to laws enacted by the Legislature.
It passed only after substantial changes were made to the sponsor’s original vision for the “constitutional court.”
Rep. Matt MacPherson, R-West Valley City, had previously proposed appointing three new judges to hear cases seeking to overturn a law passed by the Legislature. But opponents argued it would create a situation where the lawmakers could handpick judges likely to rule in their favor.
Under the new version of HB392, three judges, each from a different judicial district of the state, would be randomly assigned to hear constitutional challenges to a law. Regardless of how the three judges rule, the case could still be appealed to the Utah Supreme Court, which would have final say on the matter.
MacPherson said the tension between the branches may have reached an “unhealthy level” and his bill is meant to “restore the public trust.”
MacPherson had previously threatened impeachment for a judge who ruled that congressional boundaries drawn by the Legislature unlawfully favored Republicans and imposed a different map with a Democrat-leaning district.
Rep. Doug Owens, D-Millcreek, said during debate that he was concerned about the “optics” of the bill. Because of frustration over certain rulings, he said, the Legislature decided to “set up a special court for us, to have our issues that we think are most important take precedence over other needful business in the courts.”
But House Majority Leader Casey Snider, R-Paradise, who in December sponsored a resolution condemning the courts for judicial activism, said the new system would add transparency and that decisions from three judges would have more credibility and less bias than decisions by just one judge.
“Right now,” he said, “there’s not trust between the legislative branch and the judicial branch, but I think this bill and this process allows us to mend those fences.”
The measure passed the House 56-15 and now goes to the Senate.
If it gets the support of two-thirds of the senators and is signed by the governor, the new law would take effect immediately. Cases currently pending before other judges could be reassigned to the new panel, MacPherson said, but previous decisions in the cases would stand.
Court packing?
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah State Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew Durrant delivers the State of the Judiciary speech at the Capitol in Salt Lake City, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026.
Sponsors of the judicial expansion argued that they were not “packing” the court, but that the additional justices were needed to help expedite rulings.
Beck, on his podcast this week, disagreed.
“You increased it to seven because it’s overwhelmed? That was a lie,” Beck said. “That’s a lie. Numbers are numbers. Math is math. Sorry, GOP. Math is universal.”
The number of filings before the Utah Supreme Court increased from 253 in 2010 to 270 in 2025 — about one additional filing a year, according to data from the Utah Administrative Office of the Courts.
Chief Justice Matthew Durrant, during his State of the Judiciary address on the opening day of the legislative session, said the high court had “essentially no backlog.”
Some lower court judges, meanwhile, have a caseload that is 130% of the optimal level and a backlog of more than 8,000 cases.
“A legislature that expands a court after losing cases is not defending a republic,” Beck said, “it’s announcing constitutional limits only apply … unless they’re inconvenient. What kind of hypocrites are running the GOP?”
Beck argued that changing the courts because of unfriendly rulings sets on a dangerous path.
“When courts become political tools, when legislatures punish judges for rulings instead of fixing the law, when every law is answered with structural manipulation, you don’t get Utah,” he said, “you get California.”
“Not all at once, not overnight, but inevitably, inevitably, you get it,” he added. “And you’re almost there.”
The court expansion and the new constitutional court are only two of the ways lawmakers are targeting the judiciary this year.
Other proposed bills, if they pass, would make it harder for judges to win retention elections; would allow the Legislature to force a judge to face a retention election if the judge is deemed by lawmakers to have overstepped the courts’ authority; and would change the Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission process and the judicial nominating process.
Last year, in addition to the resolution condemning the courts, Republican lawmakers stripped the Supreme Court justices of the power to choose their chief justice and handed it to the governor.
The Utah State Bar has criticized the package of bills, arguing that it would undermine the independence of the courts.