The Utah Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday to uphold a lower court ruling that invalidated Amendment D could affect an expected court ruling on Amendment A, the income tax ballot initiative that the Utah Education Association is challenging on similar grounds.
In both cases, plaintiffs argued that the Utah Legislature violated Article XXIII of the Utah Constitution, which mandates that ballot language be published in newspapers statewide at least two months before an initiative appears on the ballot.
The high court’s decision Wednesday regarding Amendment D doesn’t automatically void Amendment A. But it will “provide guidance” to the lower court judge overseeing the ongoing Amendment A case, said Tania Mashburn, spokesperson for Utah State Courts.
“That case is based on separate facts and will need to play out in the lower court,” Mashburn said.
Amendment D would have allowed lawmakers to repeal or amend any voter-approved ballot initiative. Though the language will still appear on ballots, any votes cast will not be counted, according to the lower court ruling that the high court on Wednesday upheld.
The Amendment A ballot initiative seeks to erase a constitutional guarantee that Utah income tax revenue only be reserved for public education, higher education and services for people with disabilities. If passed, it would allow the Legislature to use some income tax revenue for a broader range of unspecified “state needs.”
As with the argument against Amendment D, the UEA argued in its separate motion filed Sept. 18 that the Amendment A ballot question is unclear and misleading, violating a constitutional requirement for ballot clarity. They also argue that it did not meet the publication requirement.
“Without transparent, accurate and complete disclosure about the amendments, there can be no meaningful right to vote,” 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson wrote in a 16-page opinion issued about Amendment D this month, which the Supreme Court upheld.
UEA attorneys argue that the high court’s ruling should automatically “settle” the Amendment A matter.
“If the publication constitutional prerequisite wasn’t met with respect to Amendment D, it also wasn’t met with respect to Amendment A, such that Amendment A should be void,” UEA counsel Kass Harstad said Thursday.
That contention still needs to be argued before 3rd District Judge Laura Scott at a later date.
Oral arguments are currently scheduled for Oct. 15, but during a status conference Wednesday, Scott suggested that another hearing could be scheduled sooner, depending on an Amendment D ruling, which was issued later that day.
Harstad said Thursday that UEA’s legal team is working with the defendants’ lawyers to arrange a court hearing before Oct. 15 to determine whether the high court’s decision about Amendment D resolves the Amendment A case.
The motion challenging Amendment A was filed as a supplemental complaint to a lawsuit that the UEA filed in May, which argues that the state’s $82 million “Utah Fits All” school voucher program is unconstitutional because it uses income tax dollars to fund vouchers meant to cover private school and homeschooling expenses.
UEA attorneys argued that the Amendment A ballot initiative is relevant to the constitutionality of the voucher program because, if it remains on the ballot, “Utah voters may unknowingly remove one of the Constitution’s primary barriers to private school vouchers,” court filings state.
Lawyers with the Alliance for Choice in Education (the organization hired by the state to manage the voucher program) disagreed, arguing that the supplemental motion’s new claims, which were not asserted against ACE, “bear no legal or factual connection to any issue in this case.”
Judge Scott dismissed that argument when she granted UEA’s motion Wednesday following the status conference, asserting that the motion was relevant to the initial complaint.
Along with the original defendants in the lawsuit — Gov. Spencer Cox, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, and the Alliance for Choice in Education — the supplemental complaint introduced four additional defendants: Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the Utah Legislature, House Speaker Mike Schultz and Senate President Stuart Adams.
Schultz and Adams were responsible for writing the descriptions of all initiatives bound for ballots, a task previously handled by nonpartisan legislative lawyers before a law change earlier this year.
