The Utah Supreme Court could be getting bigger.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox added almost $2.8 million to his proposed state budget that could help pay for expanding the state supreme court by two justices.
Republican leaders, including Cox, said the move is an effort to modernize the court and make it more efficient.
“We're not the state we were 40 years ago. We're not the state we were 20 years ago from a size perspective,” Cox told reporters back in his November monthly news conference. “It probably makes sense at this time to expand from five to seven, and certainly to expand the Court of Appeals, and see if we can't start moving so justice can move quicker through the system.”
Speaking on his podcast on Dec. 14, state Sen. Todd Weiler further confirmed that lawmakers will seriously consider court expansion this year.
“When we were a state in 1896 with, you know, with less than 300,000 people, we had five supreme court justices,” he said. “Now that we're 3.5 million people, we still have five supreme court justices. So like most states of our size, we're going to go up to seven.”
According to Weiler, lawmakers could take up the issue as soon as the first week of the 2026 General Session, which opens Jan. 20.
If Utah were to increase the size of the state supreme court by two, it would join 34 other states with courts of seven or more justices. Currently, 16 states, including Utah, have five justices on their supreme courts.
While the reasons for expanding the court might look simple on paper, it’s not as easy as just adding two more seats to the bench.
“The problem is that more cooks in the kitchen doesn't necessarily get the cake baked faster,” said University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law professor Chris Peterson. “The hardest cases have to go to the supreme court. It's not always clear that more justices would lead to a better decision.”
For him, if efficiency is really what lawmakers are after, there’s another way to go about it.
“The more efficient and cost-effective way to increase productivity and provide additional resources to the courts would be to add law clerk or judicial clerk positions for each of the supreme court justices,” he said.
Plus, it could be cheaper, because “law clerk positions are much, much less expensive than hiring a new Justice.”
For Utah State Bar Commission President Kim Cordova, it’s also a question of allocating what resources the courts have.
“I think it's always great to have lots of perspectives and lots of eyes on an issue that brings nuances to complex issues,” she said. “It's not that we necessarily, or that I necessarily oppose the expansion, I just think that the needs of the courts are elsewhere.”
In short, that money could be better used somewhere else in the judicial system. Cordova pointed to lower courts specifically.
“Lower courts just don't have enough judicial assistance. They don't have enough people to kind of keep the efficiency of the courts moving along,” she said. “Most citizens are going to have contact with the courts, either in the district court or the juvenile court, and that is where the backlog is, and that's where the resources are needed,” she said.
A bill to expand the Utah Supreme Court has not yet been made public, but on Dec. 30, Weiler opened a bill file to expand the number of judges on the court of appeals, juvenile and district courts. As of Jan. 2, there is no fiscal note or money appropriated for that bill. Money to hire additional court staff could also be added into the state budget, which is finalized at the end of each year’s legislative session.
“It does strike me that the Utah Court of Appeals probably could use a few more appellate court judges and also likely need some more resources in terms of their professional staff,” Peterson said. “They also probably need more law clerk positions there.”
The move to expand the state supreme court also comes in the wake of high-profile rulings against the Legislature on issues like redistricting and abortion. Lawmakers passed a resolution in December condemning the courts over the redistricting decision.
Through that political lens, some, including Peterson, have questioned whether efforts to add new judges could be considered court packing.
“There have been some decisions recently that were unpopular in the state legislature,” he said. “And it looks like there’s a response of trying to add a couple of additional justices to rebalance the court in a way that is aligned with the folks that are going to be confirming and nominating those justices.”
Because of Utah’s firmly right-leaning politics, Cox doesn’t believe that claim holds much water.
“It would also be weird to look at court packing when, you know, it's been Republican governors and Republican senators that have made all of the appointments,” he said in November. “I've never looked at it that way.”
Given how lopsided statewide politics are in favor of Republicans, it’s unlikely that the current dynamics will change in the near term.
Cox also brushed off the idea that the strained relationship between the legislative and judicial branches was a motivation.
“I didn't have that same consternation, and I think it's a good idea,” he said.
Still, Peterson warned that if lawmakers’ efforts are, in fact, politically motivated to ensure more favorable court decisions, they should tread lightly.
“I’m not suggesting that it's unconstitutional to do this, but there has been a taboo against court packing in our republic for a long time, because it's a risky and potentially dangerous way to approach solving our problems,” he said. “They risk a cycle of escalation, both here in the state and in other states, and also potentially the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Editor’s note: KUER is a licensee of the University of Utah but operates as an editorially independent news organization.
