The Utah Supreme Court on Wednesday said state lawmakers failed to follow the constitutional requirements to put Amendment D on the general election ballot this year.
The amendment would have effectively rewritten the state constitution to cement the Utah Legislature's ability to override voter-approved ballot initiatives.
Amendment D will appear on ballots this fall, but all votes on the matter will be void and not counted.
Representing the plaintiffs in the case, attorney Mark Gaber with the Campaign Legal Center praised the court’s decision.
“They ruled in our favor on both grounds that it was misleading and that it wasn’t published properly,” Gaber said.
The Utah Supreme Court’s decision upheld a lower court ruling which found the ballot language describing the amendment’s goals was misleading and that the legislature failed to publish the proposed language in newspapers across the state, as required under the state constitution.
Following the decision, Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz issued a statement calling the court’s decision “unprecedented and troubling.”
Gaber said lawmakers should have followed the requirements laid out in state law.
“At some point you gotta just take personal responsibility and do better,” Gaber said. “Read the constitution, do what it says, and be honest with the voters. That’s not the court’s fault. That’s the legislature’s fault and they really ought to stop blaming the court.”
Gaber said the Utah Supreme Court will issue a longer opinion on the case in the coming months which will set a standard for how ballot initiatives are interpreted in the future.
