The Utah Judiciary said judges and court employees have received threats of violence since Third District Court Judge Dianna Gibson sided with plaintiffs in the case redrawing Utah’s congressional map.
Any threats toward judges or court employees were “unacceptable, dangerous, and may violate state or federal law,” the state’s third branch of government said in a statement. The courts added that they would not comment on any specifics.
“Any conduct aimed at causing fear for a ruling or undermining the safe operation of the justice system strikes at the heart of the rule of law,” the judiciary wrote. “Such actions endanger not only the individuals targeted but the functioning of the justice system itself.”
The threats are part of a trend of politically motivated violence in recent years. Not just in Utah with the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, but also the targeting of lawmakers in Minnesota and the attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump.
That’s something that worries University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Louisa Heiny.
“[Those things] increase the fear for any public figure who is out there doing their job,” she said. “I would hope that we can have civil conversations, rather than these really knee-jerk threatening reactions.”
Another University of Utah law professor, Chris Peterson, called threats to judges “completely unacceptable in a civil society.”
“We have courts to try to resolve these tough questions that come up,” he said. “We need to have our judges be able to make decisions without fear or favor based on the laws and the Constitution.”
Both Heiny and Peterson agree that courts have ruled on tough cases throughout the history of the United States, and charged emotions after a high-profile ruling are nothing new.
For example, Heiny highlighted the “huge uproar” after the U.S. Supreme Court enshrined Miranda Rights into law in the landmark 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision. Many criticized the decision to inform suspected criminals of their rights.
“The Supreme Court got nasty letters, death threats,” she said. “Congress took up a bill to overrule Miranda versus Arizona. Lots of things tend to happen when people are upset by judicial rulings.”
What feels different now, she said, is social media’s impact on today’s political discourse.
“We're all talking to people who think like us, and we're not having as many civil, balanced conversations as we might have.”
Judge Gibson has also been the subject of political pressure from lawmakers.
Soon after her ruling, Utah Republican Rep. Matt MacPherson posted on social media that he would pursue articles of impeachment against her. Rep. Candice Pierucci, another state Republican, called Gibson’s ruling "judicial activism.”
In Peterson’s opinion, the reaction to the ruling has been heavy-handed.
“This is a judge who is applying the state Supreme Court's ruling on the [Utah] Constitution,” he said. “And I get that some people don't like the outcome, that's reasonable, but it's not reasonable to take it out on the judge who's just doing her job.”
Impeachment could be a high bar to clear. Heiny highlighted that it’s not as simple as “we don't like what you did.”
“It's, ‘Have you violated the standard that we set for you? Did you commit a crime? Perhaps, was that a felony? Did you engage in malfeasance of some kind?” Heiny said. “That's not the same thing as, ‘Did you decide something in a way that makes us unhappy?”
The Utah State Bar condemned the calls for impeachment, and now the American Bar Association has weighed in, too. Their statement mentioned Utah specifically, saying “efforts to intimidate or remove judges for their lawful decisions risk turning our courts into arenas of political retribution rather than impartial arbiters of justice.”
Lawmakers could be laying the groundwork for such an argument, however. Well before Gibson’s ruling, GOP Sen. Brady Brammer said during an Oct. 6 special session that a court choosing a congressional map not drawn by the Legislature would be tantamount to “malfeasance.”
For Heiny’s part, impeaching Gibson would not only be a tall order for lawmakers but would ultimately set a bad precedent. And it might not even change the outcome of Gibson’s decision. A different judge might not come to a different conclusion, she said.
“And if they did, I hate the idea that judges are asked to think about their livelihood and the impact of a ruling on their livelihood, as opposed to, ‘Am I doing the job that I was entrusted to do, and am I doing it to the best of my ability?’”
Editor’s note: KUER is a licensee of the University of Utah but operates as an editorially independent news organization.
