The Utah Republican Party continues its brazen assault on the independence of the state’s judicial branch. And on anyone who dares to disagree with party leaders.

And it is impossible not to notice that those targeted by Utah Republicans are overwhelmingly female.

If you are not outraged, as the saying goes, you are not paying attention.

The most recent casualty of that campaign is a member of the Utah Supreme Court. Justice Diana Hagen resigned her position May 8, effective immediately, rather than subject herself and those close to her to an intrusive and redundant investigation.

But it is the entire state, and its system of constitutional checks and balances, that has been damaged and will continue to suffer until we demand an end to the drive by GOP lawmakers amassing all power onto themselves.

The patriarchal Republican supermajority in the Legislature — led by Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz and abetted by Gov. Spencer Cox — have shown they simply cannot abide having their power challenged. Especially by women.

Utah courts have rightly invalidated lawmakers’ illegal efforts to undermine the constitutional right of Utah voters to make law through the initiative process, to impose a design for congressional districts that is not in keeping with the law and to abuse that process by putting deliberately misleading ballot questions before the people.

The party’s response: To call for individual members of the high court to be rejected by the electorate when two of them, Hagen and Justice Jill Pohlman, face their regular retention election this November.

Utah voters must remember that the power to retain, or not, state judges belongs to them, not the Legislature or a single political party.

Recently Hagen was the target of rumors, which can be traced to her ex-husband, alleging she had an improper relationship with an attorney who had matters before the court.

Judges are human and vulnerable to conflicts of interest, real or imagined. In Utah, the system for policing judges is called the Utah Judicial Conduct Commission. That bipartisan board that looked into the allegations against Hagen and pronounced them “speculative, overstated, and misleading,” with “very little credibility,” and closed the case.

But the report, which is by law confidential, was leaked, leading to Republican calls for another investigation of Hagen. Though the appropriate position would have been to support the JCC’s internal investigation of how and by whom the confidential report was divulged.

The governor said such a probe should be independent and not a “witch hunt.” But Hagen had had enough. She resigned, taking with her nine years of experience as a judge and many more years service as a prosecutor.

The message: Supreme court judges, who take an oath to uphold Utah’s constitution, risk being hounded from office if they offend Utah lawmakers. Especially if they are women.

The people have lost not only the services of Hagen, but will be without the talents of many other attorneys, male and female, who will now avoid seeking positions on the bench for fear of being the target of politicized investigations.

The people of Utah must not stand for that.

Meanwhile, the Legislature and the governor are moving in other ways to bring those they dislike, mostly women, to heel.

Republican leaders have recently targeted historian Sharon McMahon, successfully pushing to have her disinvited from giving the commencement address at Utah Valley University. They are moving the office of State Auditor Tina Cannon out of the Capitol building, over her objections. They defunded, without warning, Professor Susan Madsen’s Utah Women & Leadership Project at Utah State University.

It all reeks of sexism.

Lawmakers also passed, and the governor quickly signed, a law expanding the membership of the Supreme Court from five to seven, for no apparent reason other than to dilute the power of the current court.

Then the independent body charged with coming up with candidates to fill seats on the high court, the Appellate Judicial Nominating Commission, produced an all-male list of 12 finalists.

The obvious implication being that additional male justices would be less likely to stand up to the Legislature’s history of repeated injuries and usurpations than is the sitting court, where, until recently, women outnumbered men 3-2.

It is part of the genius of the American system of government that we divide power among three independent, co-equal branches of government. That balance is threatened when one branch overtly seeks to undermine the others.

Those who oversee all three branches, the people, should make it clear that such power grabs are not to be tolerated.

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