A new lawsuit filed Thursday looks to nullify all decisions made by the Utah Inland Port Authority’s board since 2022 and challenges its constitutionality.
Two environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, argue that the authority operates as an executive agency but is controlled by the Utah Legislature and, therefore, violates the Utah Constitution’s separation of powers principle.
Legislators reformed the authority’s board in 2022 and gave legislative leaders the power to appoint more than half of the body’s voting members. The controversial inland port authority aims to develop dry-land ports, or logistics hubs for moving freight and distributing goods, across the state.
“This lawsuit aims to reverse the Utah [Inland] Port Authority’s disastrous record of using public money to fast track massive industrial development that’s accelerating the collapse of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem,” said Deeda Seed, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.
“The port authority and its board have consistently prioritized the interests of private developers over protecting people and the environment,” Seed continued. “There’s too high a cost to our fragile Great Salt Lake and the communities, plants and animals that depend on it.”
The advocacy groups specifically highlighted the authority’s projects in Tooele County and Spanish Fork as endangering wetlands alongside the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake, respectively.
In the complaint, the groups also said the authority’s project areas also threaten the public health of residents living nearby and homeowners’ home values.
UIPA Executive Director Ben Hart disputed the groups’ assertion that the authority had not been a good steward of wetlands in the Great Salt Lake basin, calling the lawsuit “borderline defamation.”
“When you look around the state and you look at all the other boards that have appointments from both the Speaker [of the Utah House of Representatives] and the President [of the Utah Senate], there’s been a lot of board action that’s been taken by other entities across the state,” Hart said. “To be honest, I’m very confused as to why they would question the constitutionality when there’s literally decades of precedent for this happening.”
Hart pointed to the Utah Lake Authority and the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority as examples of other boards that have positions appointed by legislative leaders. However, on those boards, legislative appointees make up far less than half of each.
Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, state Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and Gov. Spencer Cox were also named as defendants in the lawsuit. Utah 3rd District Judge Heather Brereton is assigned to the case.
