Tribune editorial: The Utah Legislature is working quickly to add to its own power by weakening the courts

In sports, it’s called “Working the refs.” Players and coaches question, flatter, yell, stare, scowl, kick dirt and do other things in the hope that umpires and referees will make calls favorable to their team.

When it’s only a game, it can be part of the fun, part of the psychodrama that makes the contest more interesting.

When it is people who already hold a great deal of power trying to influence, cajole, threaten or weaken those whose job it is to provide the necessary checks and balances on that power, it is serious business.

And bad news.

The Republican supermajority in the Utah Legislature, with the assistance of the eagerly accommodating Gov. Spencer Cox, has brought forth a swarm of legislation designed to diminish the judiciary as a co-equal branch of government, one that exists to rein in the excesses of the other two branches.

The lawmakers are reacting petulantly to a series of rulings by various courts, including the Utah Supreme Court, that didn’t go the way Republicans wanted them to.

Our courts have — rightly, in our view — ruled against the Legislature on matters that run from the state’s draconian abortion limits to the rules for amending the state Constitution and following the will of the people when they exercise their power to pass laws through the initiative process.

So legislators, rather than obey the rules, are seeking to intimidate, or disempower, those who enforce them.

Ignoring opposition from the people who know best what the courts are for — current and former judges, the Utah State Bar, many other attorneys — legislators have created a new beast called a “constitutional court.” Because it is a path that the state, but not the people, can take to sidetrack constitutional challenges to state actions, it might be better described as the “unconstitutional constitutional court.”

Lawmakers have also expanded the Utah Supreme Court from five justices to seven, a court-packing plan they tried to justify by claiming that the added personnel will speed up the judicial process. Though at least one former member of the court pointed out that getting consensus from seven top jurists will take longer, and cost more money, than getting it from five.

Others who know the process argue that any logjams in our courts come from too few judges — and clerks, and bailiffs, and stenographers — at the district court level, where the vast majority of judicial business is done. Where ordinary people who seek justice, or at least the peaceful resolution of disputes, deserve to have their pleas heard in an orderly manner.

Other bills now in the hopper would take away the current well-designed processes for naming and retaining judges in favor of a system that would increase the power of the governor and Legislature to politicize the courts.

Utah voters should tell their lawmakers what a bad idea this all is.

Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.