In a third check from the courts on the Utah Legislature’s attempt to assert its power over ballot initiatives, the Utah Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with anti-gerrymandering groups in what is likely the final nail in Amendment D’s coffin — at least this year.
The evening after the Utah Supreme Court spent more than three hours listening to oral arguments in state attorneys’ appeal to restore Amendment D, all five of the court’s justices issued a unanimous opinion upholding a district court judge’s decision earlier this month to void it from the Nov. 5 ballot.
“The district court correctly ruled that neither constitutional prerequisite was met with respect to Amendment D,” the Utah Supreme Court wrote in the ruling. “The Legislature did not cause the amendment to be published in newspapers throughout the state for two months, and the description that will appear on the ballot does not submit the amendment to voters ‘with such clarity as to enable the voters to express their will.’”
Had Amendment D stayed on the ballot and had voters approved it, it would have effectively sidestepped the Utah Supreme Court’s recent interpretation of the Utah Constitution that limited the Legislature’s powers to repeal and replace government-reform ballot initiatives and instead rewrite the constitution to cement lawmakers’ power to override any voter-approved ballot initiative.
However, the Nov. 5 ballot language posing the question to voters — written by Utah’s top Republican legislative leaders — did not explain that in plain language, prompting critics to sue, claiming Amendment D’s language was “false and misleading.”
Amendment D’s opponents also claimed state officials failed to meet publication requirements laid out in the Utah Constitution, which explicitly states the Legislature “shall cause” the text of constitutional amendments to be “published in at least one newspaper in every county of the state, where a newspaper is published, for two months immediately preceding the next general election.”
On Sept. 12, a district court judge agreed on both counts, and she voided the question while allowing it to stay on the ballot since the decision came so close to ballot printing deadlines.
State attorneys then appealed the decision to the Utah Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.
“Although voters should have the opportunity to decide whether Amendment D strikes the correct balance between the people’s direct legislative power and that of their elected representatives, the public interest requires that constitutional amendments be submitted to voters in the way mandated by the supreme law of the state embodied in the Utah Constitution,” the Supreme Court wrote.
The swift decision comes after state officials urged the court to make a timely decision to dispel a “cloud” of uncertainty over the fate of the ballot question and the election before ballots begin hitting most Utahns’ mailboxes in mid-October.
Ryan Bell, a board member of Better Boundaries, the anti-gerrymandering group that sought the initial 2018 voter initiative to enact an independent redistricting commission that the Utah Legislature repealed and replaced (the constitutionality of which is currently being litigated), issued a statement applauding the Utah Supreme Court’s decision.
“The Court has now issued two unanimous decisions upholding the right of the people to pass initiatives without intrusion or correction by the legislature,” Bell said. “Today’s decision goes further, holding that the ballot language authored by legislative leadership seeking to push through its hasty amendment was too confusing to even place before Utah’s voters.”
Bell urged the Legislature to now “accept a clear reality – that its attempts to subvert the right of the people to reform their government must stop.”
“We are grateful that our balanced system of government has worked, and look forward to the implementation of the reforms the people voted for in 2018,” Bell said.
Read the full report at UtahNewsDispatch.com.
