Kamas-area voters will cast ballots for or against West Hills on Nov. 4. If incorporation fails, 3rd District Judge Matthew Bates said his opinion on the issue might not matter.
“There's going to be an election, and this is something I think ought to be put to the people,” the judge said during oral arguments Sept. 16. “And if the people decide that they want to have a municipality at that point, the court will let them know if in fact that's going to happen, based on the claims that have been brought here today.”
Ten landowners who oppose incorporation say it shouldn’t happen. They sued to block a vote on West Hills in May, claiming its boundaries are gerrymandered to include only those who want the town.
Their attorney Janet Conway characterized it as a local version of the statewide fight over congressional maps that a Salt Lake City court found were gerrymandered.
“In fact, I used the [League of Women Voters] complaint as my template,” Conway told the Summit County judge Sept. 16.
Some of her clients say they weren’t notified when they were included in town boundaries; some never got the chance to opt out of the proposed town limits.
But attorneys for town sponsor Derek Anderson deny the allegations of gerrymandering. They say the Utah Legislature wrote the law to balance the need for some people to opt out with the need for a final map for residents to vote on.
“Since it's not a fundamental right, they don't have to grant it in the first place,” Anderson’s attorney David Jordan argued. “That's up to the legislature, in their wisdom to decide just exactly how they'll create the process.”
Jordan said the court can’t necessarily strike down the law if it’s not violating a fundamental right or harming a protected class. He said the anti-incorporation landowners are not a protected class, which is usually defined according to race, gender or religion, for example.
Conway countered the court can and should strike down parts of the incorporation law since she also sued under a clause in the Utah Constitution called “uniform operation of laws.”
She said that part of the constitution gives the court more power to ensure the law applies equally to more classes of citizens than just those typically considered “protected.”
“It's hard to do this. I want to decide now, but as I think about it, it just makes a lot of sense to me [to wait],” Bates said.
Utah Lt. Gov. Diedre Henderson also is named in the lawsuit, but her attorneys haven’t taken a position on the incorporation law’s constitutionality. They maintain her office simply applied it as written.
The law has changed since Anderson filed for incorporation in April 2023, but his attorney said a ruling in the West Hills case would still affect current and future incorporations.
There are about 47 voters within the town’s final 3,600-acre boundaries who will vote on West Hills this November.
Bates gave the parties’ attorneys 10 days to make additional arguments that might persuade him to issue a ruling before the election. Conway said she would do so.
Another of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Michael Judd, is a shareholder at Parsons, Behle & Latimer which is a financial supporter of KPCW.
