Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill on Saturday that expands the Utah Supreme Court from five justices to seven, setting up a faster shift in the state’s top appellate bench during an unfolding redistricting dispute. Supporters of the measure said more justices would improve how the court handles complex cases, even as legal experts warned the move could complicate tensions between the legislature and the judiciary.
Republicans backed the bill after a series of losses before the Utah Supreme Court, the Associated Press reported. The AP said the judiciary did not request additional justices, and legal experts suggested the proposal could be a “dangerous precedent” given the strained relationship between branches of Utah government.
Democrats, who the AP said were united in opposition, criticized the measure’s timing as suspicious. The concern centers on a redistricting case that the Legislature asked the court to overturn last week, after a redistricting ruling gave Democrats a chance to compete for one of Utah’s four Republican-held congressional seats in the fall.
Cox’s signature also meant the bill took effect immediately because it received approval from more than two-thirds of legislators. That immediate effective date allowed Cox to bypass a several-month waiting period to start appointing the additional justices, according to the AP’s account of the law’s operation.
Under Utah’s system, the governor appoints Supreme Court justices and the state Senate approves them, and the AP said that differs from the way many other states handle selection. Cox, identified by the AP as a Republican, said the additions would align Utah with the size of other states, and he said the policy is not politically motivated because Republican governors and senators have made the appointments in recent years.
The AP said that, once Cox fills the new seats, he will have appointed five of the seven justices. The bill’s supporters also argued that it would help the court manage its workload, while Chief Justice Matthew Durrant told legislators on the opening day of the 2026 session that the court had “essentially no backlog” and urged the Legislature to add judges to lower courts instead.
House Majority Leader Casey Snider, a Republican sponsor of the bill, defended the expansion by saying, “Seven sets of eyes reviewing the most complex and difficult issues our state has ever faced is better than having only five sets of eyes.” John Pearce, who recently retired as associate chief justice, said he doubted the change would make the court more efficient, adding, “The more sets of comments you have to take into account, the longer the process takes,” and warning, “If what the Legislature is hoping to do is speed up the work of the court, it’s going to be counterproductive.”
The AP reported that the Utah State Bar raised concerns about the expansion and other proposals it said would weaken judicial independence. Among the bar’s cited concerns was a bill that would create a new trial court with exclusive jurisdiction for constitutional challenges and would limit the ability of other judges and courts to block potentially unconstitutional state laws through injunctions. The AP also reported that Republicans were collecting signatures for a November ballot initiative that would restore their ability to draw voting districts that favor a political party, a practice known as gerrymandering.