A former Utah attorney general who battled to regulate cable television in the 1980s has died.
David L. Wilkinson died “peacefully in his sleep” on Dec. 10 at his home in Provo, according to his family. He was 86.
In 1980, Wilkinson challenged incumbent Utah Attorney General Robert B. Hansen, defeating his fellow Republican in a primary and going on to win that year’s general election and reelection in 1984. Running for a third term in 1988, Wilkinson cited his office’s victory in a battle with the federal government over ownership of the bottom of Utah Lake and the execution of Pierre Dale Selby, one of the infamous Ogden Hi-Fi killers, as two of his major accomplishments. But his name would be forever tied to Utah’s failed attempt to regulate cable TV.
With Wilkinson’s encouragement, the Utah Legislature passed a measure in 1983 dubbed the Utah Cable Television Programming Decency Act, which restricted “indecent” programming to the hours of midnight to 7 a.m. Under the terms of the law, programmers like HBO and Showtime would be prohibited from airing R-rated movies 17 hours a day.
Although programmers quickly obtained an injunction preventing the law from being enforced, Wilkinson spent up to $2 million defending it over the next four years and losing at every turn. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 7-2, upheld lower court rulings declaring the law unconstitutional — a violation of the First Amendment.
After failing in court, Wilkinson said that “many positive things have resulted from the fight” — including that cable TV had become more responsive to how it scheduled “offensive” programs, although there was no evidence of that. He also opined that another attempt to regulate cable TV could succeed after “changes take place on the [Supreme] Court in the next two or three years,” which did not happen. ″While I regret the court’s decision today, I do not regret my decision to pursue this matter to its ultimate resolution.”
Both Democrats and Republicans criticized Wilkinson for wasting taxpayer money defending the law, and it became a campaign issue when he ran for a third term in 1988. Paul Van Dam battered Wilkinson over the issue, and the Democrat defeated the incumbent by about 28,000 votes.
Wilkinson, born Dec. 6, 1936, was the son of another moral crusader — Ernest L. Wilkinson, president of Brigham Young University from 1951 to 1971. Under his administration, Ernest Wilkinson expanded and strengthened BYU’s Honor Code, banning beards, barring pants for women, regulating women’s skirt length and men’s hair length, ordering students to report their peers’ violations, and mandating “virtue and sexual purity.”
Son David Wilkinson also made headlines when, after his office lost a case to Brian Barnard, he failed to pay the attorney’s legal fees, as ordered by a court. That is until Barnard persuaded a judge to order Wilkinson’s state salary to be garnished, and the then-attorney general quickly approved the payment.
According to Wilkinson’s obituary, he grew up in Washington, D.C., until the family moved to Provo in 1951, when his father became president of BYU, owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served a Latter-day Saint mission to Germany from 1957 to 1959. Wilkinson received degrees from BYU, Oxford University (where he was a Rhodes scholar) and Cal-Berkeley, and practiced law in California, Utah and Washington, D.C.
Current Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes issued a statement expressing his sadness at Wilkinson’s death and adding, “I am grateful to him and his family for his years of dedicated service to an office and state I love.”
Wilkinson was a “wonderful father,” according to his obituary, and his family “will remember him most for his curiosity and love of learning, his gift of conversation, and his witty sense of humor. He loved researching family history, reading the newspaper, ice cream, tennis and BYU football.”
Wilkinson is survived by his wife, Tricia, four children, 17 grandchildren, and one sister. He was preceded in death by his parents and four siblings.
