Fourth District Judge Kasey Wright hasn’t even been on the bench for two full years — but he’s tapping out, with a warning for Utahns who care about justice.

Many judges are carrying over a thousand cases and “sacrificing their personal time and family life” to fulfill their duties, he wrote in his recent resignation letter.

“The result is that judges are not only dealing with emotionally and intellectually taxing issues, they are working fifty to sixty-hour weeks. This is not sustainable!” Wright wrote. “Judges will burn out quickly and the quality of judicial applicants will decline.”

The end result, he said, is that “justice suffers.”

Wright has been a judge since October 2024 and submitted his letter of resignation to Gov. Spencer Cox earlier this month, effective at the end of the year. In it, he said the pressure to keep pace with Utah’s growing population and rising number of cases puts pressure on judges to decide more cases in a shorter amount of time.

“That should concern every citizen,” he writes.

The Judicial Council asked the Legislature for 10 new judges — eight at the district court level, one juvenile court judge and one appeals court judge — to alleviate the burdens on judges.

Republican lawmakers took a different path, prioritizing the expansion of the Utah Supreme Court — which had consistently been ruling against legislative priorities in recent years — by two justices.

They also added two appeals court judges and three of the eight district court judges that had been requested.

On average, judges had 112% of the recommended caseload during the 2025 budget year, according to data from the Utah Judicial Council, and some districts were as high as 122%.

The number of hearings district judges presided over increased 24% over the previous nine years and the number of search warrants reviewed increased 67% in five years.

Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Bountiful, an attorney who chairs the Senate committee that has oversight of the judiciary, sponsored a bill last session that reflected the courts’ request for 10 judges, but it was pared back.

He said it seemed ironic that he first saw Wright’s resignation letter during the confirmation hearing for one of the new district judges, this one in the Provo courthouse, but he believes there is merit to the judge’s concerns.

Weiler said he has talked to another judge who said he is working harder than at any point in his career, but loves the job, so it’s too soon to know if Wright’s departure is part of a larger trend.

“I’m absolutely concerned about it and I’ve shared it with some other senators just to say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to take note of this,’” he said. “I’m hoping this isn’t the first of many more.”

The senator said he believes the Legislature will keep chipping away at the courts’ requests.

“I would say help is on the way. Now did we need more than three on the district court level? Sure,” he said. “Will we get more? Probably. Will this letter help? Probably.”

Wright concluded his letter with an expression of gratitude for the other judges who are making sacrifices to keep the system functioning.

“My hope is that the observations in this letter will be received not as criticism,” he wrote, “but as a plea for the resources necessary to uphold a justice system that is paramount to the survival of this republic of the people, by the people, and for the people.”