A bill seeking to expand Utah’s judiciary, both in the lower courts and up to the Supreme Court, was introduced with heavy discussion and debate in a state Senate committee on Thursday. The idea is headed by GOP lawmakers with the intent to help the court system with its caseload.
The bill, SB134, advanced 9 to 1 with Sen. Stephanie Pitcher, D-Millcreek, voting against it. The bill intends to add more judges to the state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. Amendments to the bill would also add one district court judge each in Salt Lake City, St. George and Provo.
There are currently five justices on the Supreme Court and seven judges on the Court of Appeals. Sen. Chris Wilson, R-Logan, chief sponsor of the bill, is proposing increasing the highest court to seven judges and the appellate court to nine.
In 1896, when Utah became a state, “We had 276,000 people, and we had a Supreme Court of three justices, that was expanded to five justices in 1917 when we had roughly 444,000 people,” Wilson said. In 1987, “we created the Court of Appeals with seven judges” when the state had a population of 1.7 million people.
“Since that time, our population has doubled to 3.5 million. Currently, Utah is the 30th largest state in the country,” Wilson added, noting that “there’s roughly 35 states with either seven or nine justices. Of those, 10 of the closest states, as far as population to Utah, with the growth we’ve had, have somewhere between seven and nine justices the Supreme Court.”
His point was that with a growing population comes a growing caseload.
If the bill were to pass the Legislature and be signed by the Gov. Spencer Cox — which he is expected to given he suggested it last month — it would be the first time since 2016 that a state has increased the amount of judges to the Supreme Court bench.
Pitcher previously told the Deseret News that she views the Supreme Court expansion at this time as less to do with caseload and more to do with politics. It has “everything to do with the fact that my colleagues are getting rulings they’re not happy with,” she said.
Contentious issues such as abortion and the state’s most recent redistricting dispute have recently helped sharpen the divide between the legislature and judiciary. Most of the public comment on Thursday wasn’t bothered by adding judges in the lower courts; ire with the bill was almost solely targeted at adding Supreme Court justices.
Law professors, attorneys and concerned citizens viewed the proposed increase as the GOP leadership’s attempt at court-packing that is legislative-driven change versus voter-initiated change.
Those opposed also noted that the legislature should only be focusing on needs the judiciary requests. Earlier this week, during is State of the Judiciary address, Chief Justice Matthew B. Durrant made it clear to lawmakers that adding more justices to the Supreme Court was not the desire of the court.
Regarding caseload concerns, Durrant said that in 2025 the state’s Supreme Court finally caught up on the backlog from the COVID-19 pandemic, and its caseload is now considered normal.
“Disagreement is inherent in our system of government. Public disparagement of another branch is not,” Durrant told the Legislature. “While polarized ‘us versus them’ rhetoric has become common in national circles, it is not and should not be the norm here.”