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Tribune editorial: Justices of the Utah Supreme Court are the Utahns of the Year

The least democratic branch of government does the best job of defending democracy and human rights

By The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board
  | Dec. 26, 2024, 1:05 p.m.
| Updated: 4:12 p.m.

What to say about a state where the branch of government that is, by design, the least democratic and furtherest from the people is clearly the branch that is doing the most to defend democratic values and uphold the rights of the people?

Only that we are very fortunate to have the Utah Supreme Court.

Several times over the past year, the five members of the state’s top court have stood up for the democratic process and individual rights as promised in the Utah Constitution.

These decisions were not only bold and just, but meaningful. Enough to earn them the designation of The Salt Lake Tribune’s Utahns of the Year for 2024.

Each December since 1997, The Tribune has chosen a Utah newsmaker, a person, persons or institution that has — for good or ill — had the most significant impact on the state and its people

In rulings that were often unanimous, justices who were all appointed by Republican governors and confirmed by the Republican super-majority in the Utah Senate have stood in the way of the Republican ruling class and its efforts to silence the voice of the people.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Supreme Court Justices John A. Pearce, Paige Petersen, Diana Hagen, Jill Pohlman and Chief Justice Matthew B. Durrant following the State of the Judiciary at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024.

Chief Justice Matthew B. Durrant, Associate Chief Justice John A. Pearce, Justice Diana Hagen, Justice Paige Petersen and Justice Jill M. Pohlman collectively have acted to defend the constitutionally guaranteed right of the people of Utah to reform their own government and derailed, at least temporarily, legislative attempts to bamboozle us into cutting back on our own rights.

They have also stood up for the rights of women, once by blocking enforcement of the state’s regressive ban on nearly all abortions and again by ruling that women who had accused a physician of sexually assaulting them had a meaningful right to sue that doctor.

The ruling protecting the right of Utah women to self-determination is not the final word on the matter. All it did was uphold a lower court’s ruling that the state’s near-ban on abortion — enacted in 2020 but blocked until the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 reversal of the Roe v. Wade ruling — should be held invalid while defenders of abortion rights seek to have the law voided under individual rights guarantees of the Utah Constitution.

Read more: Katharine Biele wins The Salt Lake Tribune readers’ vote for 2024 Utahn of the Year

The matter is now back before Utah’s district courts, though there can be little questions that, no matter how those judges rule, the state’s Supreme Court will have the matter before it again. There is reason to hope that our justices, unlike their federal cousins, will again stand for the rights of women.

As they did when they ruled that 94 women who alleged sexual abuse at the hands of a Provo doctor could sue under the more accessible law applying to abuse, rather than be limited to the much more restrictive process for alleging medical malpractice.

Sexual assault is not medical practice, mal or otherwise, the court properly ruled, and not subject to the limited rules governing the practice of medicine.

The justices stood up for the integrity of our elections by quickly brushing aside baseless claims from state Rep. Phil Lyman that his loss to Gov. Spencer Cox in the Republican primary shouldn’t count and that the court should take the extraordinary step of proclaiming Lyman the nominee.

The court this year also established a pattern of standing up for the rights of all Utahns to manage their own government, even when the people running that government don’t want us to.

The court takes seriously the provision of the Utah Constitution that holds that “All political power is inherent in the people; and all free governments are founded on their authority for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform their government as the public welfare may require.”

Specifically, the court said that citizen initiatives that alter the form of state government must be respected by the Legislature.

The case involved the Legislature’s move to gut the 2018 Better Boundaries Initiative, a measure passed by the voters that demanded an independent process for drawing legislative and congressional districts. A bill passed to make the process advisory, and retain for the Legislature the untrammeled right to gerrymander our electoral process, was challenged by reform activists and the high court rejected a move by lawmakers to have that suit swept aside.

The detailed question of whether Better Boundaries will stand is still working its way through the process. But the Supreme Court decision protecting the people’s right to reform their own government gives us hope for democracy in Utah.

So does a related case, where the court killed a proposed constitutional amendment that would have restored the Legislature’s right to overturn any referendum. Lawmakers didn’t follow the constitutional process for getting the measure on the ballot, the court rightly ruled. The Legislature also presented voters with horribly misleading language that made the amendment sound like it would do the opposite of what it would really accomplish.

After each of these rulings, legislative leaders made statements excoriating the justices. House Speaker Mike Schultz and President Stuart Adams accused the court of, among other things, “creating chaos and striking at the very heart of our republic.”

The truth is that it is the Legislature that is creating chaos, and justices of the Utah Supreme Court who are standing up for our republic, doing no more — and no less — than their basic constitutional job of providing checks and balances in order to preserve our democracy.

Thus have the justices earned recognition as Utahns of the Year.

The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board’s previous picks for Utahns of the Year include:

By The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board