After the Utah Supreme Court disqualified a proposed constitutional amendment before voters last year because the ballot language written by the Utah House speaker and Senate president was biased and misleading, Speaker Mike Schultz has introduced a bill to shift the job back to legislative lawyers — but with a condition.
The bill, if passed, would direct legislative counsel to write ballot language, but says that the counsel “performs the duties in this section as counsel for the presiding officer,” meaning the verbiage would still be under the control of the president and the speaker.
A spokesperson for Schultz did not immediately respond to questions about the meaning of that line in the bill. Senate President Stuart Adams’ office did not answer an email about where he stands on the proposal.
Last session, a slight tweak buried in a sweeping election bill took the job of writing how a constitutional amendment is presented to voters away from legislative attorneys and gave it to Schultz, R-Hooper, and Adams, R-Layton.
Their writing was put to the test a few months later when Republican lawmakers wanted to amend the Utah Constitution to overturn a Utah Supreme Court ruling and make clear that lawmakers had the power to repeal or amend citizen-passed ballot initiatives.
Rather than telling voters the amendment would weaken the citizen-led initiative process, the ballot language Schultz and Adams wrote asked voters if they wanted to “strengthen” the process and clarify the role of the Legislature.
The League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and others challenged that wording, arguing voters could be tricked into voting to give up the constitutional right to the ballot initiative. The five Republican-appointed justices on the Utah Supreme Court unanimously agreed.
“Not only does the ballot title omit a central feature of Amendment D, but the included language would lead a reasonable voter to believe that the amendment does something entirely different,” Justice Dianna Hagen wrote for the court in striking the amendment from the ballot.
A poll released after the November election confirmed that voters would have been deceived. If the ballot language said what the amendment actually would have done, nearly 80% would have opposed it, but with the language Schultz and Adams proposed, just 40% would have opposed it.
A bill sponsored by House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City would move the task of writing the ballot language back to legislative counsel, but require that the language crafted for the ballot be “impartial.” But the powerful, GOP-led House Rules Committee has so far this session not sent the bill to a standing committee for a public hearing.
During the House Democratic caucus’ weekly meeting with reporters, scheduled minutes after Schultz’s bill was released Wednesday, Rep. Andrew Stoddard, of Sandy, said, “Anything handing it back to [Legislative Research and General Counsel] is better than what we’ve got.”
Controlling ballot initiatives remains a topic of focus for legislative Republicans.
SJR2, sponsored by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, would — if passed and adopted by voters during the 2026 election — change the Utah Constitution to require any ballot initiative that would raise taxes to get 60% support from voters. And Fillmore’s SB73 would require backers of a ballot initiative to meet the same publication requirements as the Legislature by publishing the text of the initiative in newspapers across the state for 60 days prior to the election — at an estimated cause of roughly $1.4 million.
Both pieces of legislation passed out of the House Government Operations Committee on Wednesday evening. The two Democratic members opposed Fillmore’s proposals, and one Republican joined them on each vote.
Under a proposed constitutional amendment by Rep. Anthony Loubet, R-Kearns, the Legislature would only have to post the text of proposed constitutional amendments online, rather than in newspapers. That passed unanimously in the House on Wednesday afternoon and was sent to the Senate.
The court based part of its decision to disqualify Amendment D from the ballot on the Legislature’s failure to meet the publication requirement. It also led to another amendment changing how income tax revenue can be spent also being voided in the last election.
If Loubet’s bill passes the Senate, it would still need to be published in newspapers at a cost of $1.4 million before being decided by voters. Initiative backers would have to meet the same standard in 2026 if Fillmore’s bill passes.
This story is developing and will be updated.
