S.B. 134 Court Amendments: transcript

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate that. Um, we, we, and, and the Senate has been, have been looking at for a number of years of expanding and trying to help our court system. We know that Utah, um, is, has been the fastest growing state, probably over the last, maybe a little over a decade. And we know that that has caused a caseload increase for our judicial, uh, Juab, for our judiciary. We also understand that complex cases, um, that have also, uh, getting more and more complex as they go. Mr. Chair, I'm gonna give you a little bit of a background, a little bit of a history. I, I'm kind of a history buff. So let me give you a little bit of history, uh, on, on, uh, the Supreme Court. In 1896, when the, when the state, uh, was statehood was able to become a state, we had 276,000 people and we had a, a Supreme Court of three justices. And that was expanded to five justices in 1917 when we had roughly 444,000 people. And as many of you know, in 1987 when we created the Court of Appeals, uh, with seven judges, that was in 1987, and we had 1.7 million people. Since that time, our, our, um, population has doubled to 3.5 million. Currently, um, Utah is the 30th largest state in the country. And across the country there's approximately 15 states with five justices. There are 28 states with seven justices and seven states with nine. So 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. Uh, the Supreme Court, uh, my indications are they had 58 rulings in 2025. Uh, of those 52 were unanimous, and only six of them have a dissenting opinion. And we understand in, in 2025, the Supreme Court had 270 filings. The Court of Appeals had 1,143 filings, and that was a 7% increase from the previous year. Um, and we know the Constitution, article eight, section two allow, gives the legislature the, um, the constitutional authority, uh, to provide the resources, uh, to the judiciary, and also decide how many judges, uh, are, are, are needed for the state. Uh, what we are trying to do with, or I'm trying to do with this bill, is I am trying to increase this system-wide resources. Um, and with the increase in cases, not only in the jurisdiction, but also the Court of Appeals, uh, we know that these cases are going to be filing up to the Supreme Court. Now, one thing about it, the average, we, we did 58, the average, uh, Supreme Court rulings for the last decade was 61. And over the last 20 years, the rulings have averaged around 72. Um, so there has been a drop, uh, in the rulings in the last decade from what the history has has told us. Uh, we, we agree and I agree as, as, uh, we've been looking at this for a, a number of years. I know last year, representative Jefferson Moss had a bill to, to do the exact same thing to, to raise the number of Supreme Court Justice. I'm not quite sure if he also included the two appellate court, a Court of appeal justices increase in his bill. Um, but for whatever reason, uh, the good representative decided to hold off on, on, on his bill last year, um, taking, um, a little bit of lead from the governor a couple months ago when he agreed that he thought it was a good time to expand. Uh, uh, this, the, the Supreme Court I started working on, on this bill and, and compiling information. And one other thing I wanted to mention. In 1987, we had 29 district court judges, and if you remember, we had 37 circuit court judges for a total of 66 judges under the, the old system, if you added the five Supreme Court justices, that was 71 judges that we had in 1987. Today, if this bill passes, we will have 81. Well, let me just back up. We have, we have 78 District court judges along with adding two to the appellate court and to the Supreme Court. And I may, um, uh, Mr. Chair, uh, i, I believe there should be, uh, maybe some turnover time. Uh, when, when do you want to do action on the bill as far as moving the, well,

Okay. Um, 'cause some of my notes we're going to, to, um, uh, talk about with, with the, uh, the possible substitute and the amendment. Basically what, what, what our total number of judges added since 1987, if this bill passes, uh, would increase by 26 judges that have been increased since 1987. Uh, so I think there, there has been resources that have gone toward the district level. Uh, I, I definitely agree that there's more resources that need to be added. Uh, both sy for the Systemwide resources as our backlog, uh, has continues. I think we owe it to our citizens to make sure that their cases are heard, uh, as quickly as possible. There's nothing like, uh, having a court case, uh, hanging over your head as you're, as you're trying to go about life worrying. So, um, I, I believe Mr. Chair, that should conclude if we, my, my presentation. Okay. And, um, one other thing I wanted to mention is that the average number of court of appeals or appellate judges across the country is 12 judges in the appellate court is the average. Currently we have seven. So I think we definitely need some, some, um, help there with, in, in our appellate court. And like I mentioned, uh, being the 30th largest state, uh, 35 states currently have either seven or nine justices. Um, and with the growing, again, with growing, uh, caseload and the, uh, growing complex cases that we know and talking with the judges, uh, I think this is a time I've even had, uh, attorneys approach me and, and tell me that this is 10 years too late. We should have done it 10 years ago. So, um, obviously, um, now's the time in my opinion that we should go ahead and increase the resources across the, the system.

Thank you, Senator Wilson. And I just want to note for anyone that's curious, about three and a half years ago, I, I floated the idea, I gave some media interviews about increasing the number of Supreme Court judges, uh, from seven or from five to seven. So if you're good at Google, you can find some of those. If you don't believe me, I'll tweet it, um, during this meeting. So you can go to GOP Todd and see that. Um, so I know that some people are accusing, um, uh, Senator Wilson, this bill of being court packing. I just want people to know before any of the current tensions arose, this was something that I was publicly exploring, but it's expensive. You know, these judges, once we hire, once we pay them the retirement, their benefits and their staff, it's about a half a million dollars per judge. And so I, um, you know, that that's, that's a big lift for, you know, for one bill, um, without leadership support. Yes. Senator Wilson,

And I apologize, Mr. Chair, if I can go back. Yeah, please. I should mention that. 'cause you did bring up a great point here on the, uh, on the physical note. Um, the physical note, of course, with each judge, you also, uh, inc include, include two law clerks per judge. So that would be four law clerks, uh, on the appellate court, four on the Supreme Court, along with, um, staff. There's, there's expenses for it, and there's also going to be a general fund for construction of new chambers and modifications to the bench. So, um, and in this, this, it's a four and a half million dollar physical note, currently ongoing of 2.8, one time of 1.8. Um, so it, it's a, a very large commitment, uh, for us going forward. And there will probably even be more, uh, as we have, uh, continue with action on the bill.

Thank you for that. Um, and Senator Wilson, um, I listened as you did, and I think most legislators, uh, to Chief Justice Durant and his state of the judiciary address on Tuesday. And, and he talked about the urgent need for more, uh, district court judges, and that's, you know, where a lot of the burden is. And this won't be a surprise to you, Senator Wilson, but it may be a surprise to a few people listening. I have prepared a substitute of your bill. Um, I've been working with the courts, um, Michael Drexel and Ron Gordon and others, and I've been told that their greatest need for additional district court judges now they've asked for eight, uh, but the greatest need is in, um, Salt Lake County, um, uh, Utah County, uh, and Washington County. But the greatest needs was Salt Lake and Washington County. So I prepared a substitute bill, and because I'm chairing, I'm gonna ask Senator McKell to move that bill, which isn't my name, because my, my preference as a chair is to not make motions. But that would add to your bill to district court judges in the most pressing areas. And that's the third district court and the fifth district court. So I'll defer to, um, Senator Mikel.

Thank you. Um, so the motion is going to be to delete body and title Senate bill 1 34 appellate court amendments and replace place Senate bill 1 34 pate court amendments with, with the first substitute, that is the motion. And, and for the committee's reference, Senator Brammer is going to have an amendment to this substitute as well. I see that he is online, but I just wanna signal that So you, you are aware that this will also include an additional amendment, should this committee adopt this substitute? That is my motion.

Yes. Are We jumping? Yeah, thank you. And I apologize, I can't be there right now. I'm kind of doing,

Yeah. Thank you. So I do have an amendment and I share many of the same concerns on this. And, and, and I think it's one that, that will, uh, you know, this proposal will pass. And, and although I do have some concerns on expanding the court, I'm, you know, I've been very concerned about the efficiency of the Supreme Court and the number of decisions and things like that. I'm not necessarily sure that adding more justices adds to that efficiency, but I do think that having more eyes on things is helpful to getting good, uh, uh, good reasoning. And so I, I do support it in that way. Uh, but I, I think the most acute issue with the courts is the lack of district court judges. I think we're, you know, their caseloads are just extremely high. They worked incredibly long and difficult hours. And so my amendment adds a third judge with it going into the fourth district. And so that is, so I would move amendment one in my name. Alright,

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a clarifying question. When we say adding a judge, I mean that's, that includes what you explain, uh, what it was explained by the sponsor. That's everything that comes with a judge, right?

Yeah. That staff gives them the court staff. Yeah, I I'm Sure the physical note would, it would, would include, we reflect that increase the, yeah, the clerks and the staffing. It's just under 500,000 per judge, per Judge. That's their supports, I mean, staffing and everything. And again, to be clear, we do not pay our judges 500,000, that's their salary, their benefits, their retirement and their staff. Correct. So yeah,

Per district court, right?

In the district court, yes.

Okay. Just, I just wanna make sure. So these additions that we're doing on district third, fourth, and fifth with this new amendment will include all of that support staff? Yes. With the judges. Okay. And so the fiscal note that he testified to would be increased if this goes through by about 1.5 million approximately? Give Or take. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Thanks for the clarification.

I apologize, I just had a clarifying question on the fiscal impact. Yeah. Um, can I, I guess this is the question for, uh, the sponsor of the bill or the chair, whoever has this, but, um, so 500,000 is the cost per district court judge

Estimated. Estimated. And I don't, I didn't know that. That's the good chair.

Okay. Um, can I just get a clarification on what the estimated cost is for the Supreme Court or appellate court Judge?

It's approximately the same. I mean, there's probably and Michael Drexel may wanna, um, so, so just so everybody knows, we're getting a little granular, but I appreciate the question. Center picture. A appellate court judge, whether it's Court of Appeals or Supreme Court of Utah, they make 5% more than a district court judge. So there would be that difference. And I'm not sure if their clerks or assistants are paid a little bit more or not, but, so it would be at least 5% more for, um, the salary of a, um, appellate court judge versus the salary of a district court judge. So it would be slightly more for sure if

I could ask a follow up on that. Sure, absolutely. I think I heard mentioned that with a Supreme Court Justice there would be an additional clerk or two clerks. There's, so Is that on the physical note,

there's two law clerks per justice, per Appellate court justice. Well, and also, uh, the Supreme Court, they also has two. So with the two justices in the appellate court, there will be four law clerks added. And with the two in the, the, uh, both the Supreme Court and the appellate court, they have four law clerks along with, uh, judicial assistance, um, with those. And then on the district court level, what, what we're funding is like a court clerk and like a more of a secretarial position. But then they, it's my understanding and I can anybody who's, uh, more knowledgeable, they usually share a pool of clerks among, they don't get the district court judges don't get their own clerk usually. I think that exception would be the business and chancery court, but they usually share from a pool of clerks, kind of like we share our executive assistants. So, And to be clear again, that the physical note has a one time of 1.8 million that's for modifications and then an ongoing of 2.8 million currently, uh, for salaries and, and additional staff and, and clerks. So.

No, I'm not that interested to discuss. I will get there, but I just wanna make sure we get

Senator Wilson. I, I had some reservations about this. In fact, I still have reservations that I've spoke to you about that, um, multiple occasions. Um, part of that is that I'm not certain that the efficiency comes with the adding the judges, and I've spoke to you about that as well. And although what I'm gonna propose here, I I, I do so recognize, and it's kind of at the last hour, and I'm not proposing necessarily amendment, but just something for your consideration that if we're truly gonna try to be, um, more efficient, maybe there's a model out there that could provide that efficiency. And you can only do that model with seven judges. Coincidentally, um, that model is Nevada's model Nevada did. No, this is probably some may know what I'm talking about. Some may hate it, some may like it, I don't know. But it's, it's unique, but it's been done for over 25 years and they've been affected. And not only that, they reduce caseload by 32% within two years of the introduction of the bottle. The model's this similar to, I suppose maybe there's some of the lower quotes. You have a bifurcated panels, you have two panels, three judges, each with the Chief justice overseeing those. For most cases. Anything that would be constitutional or let's say, uh, uh, uh, high profile cases would see be still be seen in banc. I think that in banc is the term for at bench or in bench. And of course under that model, um, there would be, if two of the three judges deemed that the case that they were hearing should be heard by en banc the entire bench, then they could do so as well. This way, instead of just seven Supreme Court justices being put to the bench and seeing the same amount of cases, you could literally could cut in half, well, not quite half, because you would have those guardrails in there. Uh, the possibility of hearing far more cases. I get there may be some concerns with that in that, you know, I don't have the, I don't have the seven justices weighing in on my case, let's say on a practical level, but you'd have three versus five. Right now we have five. And you'd have three of those five or potential five weighing in multiple guardrails to proven, proven. This isn't novel, it's been done in Nevada. I'm just asking that if you would consider that going forward. And, and I get, I'm kind of dropping this on you, but that's what I got. So I, I'm trying to figure out how kind of reading the tea leaves try to make it maybe more efficient if I can and offer what I can to really do so, so I, I, I don't know, I suppose there's a question in there, but mostly to ask if you'd consider conversations with me further about that. Mr. Chair? Yes.

Okay. Thank you. Well, I appreciate that, Senator Musselman, I think that any of these types of, of, uh, ways that we can to increase court, um, proficiency is, is, is what we need to look at. I think we need to continue a conversation with you and I, you're right, I'm, I don't, I'm not aware of the Nevada, uh, it sounds like it's more like an appellate court, uh, way of city where they have three sitting judges, which we do in the appellate court. So, but I, I appreciate, uh, looking into that and I, I think it's something we need to continue to discuss. I I appreciate your, at least your consideration.

Yeah, if I may, Mr. Chair on that again, I, I I get the concern from the public and I've had the same concern. What, you know, seven Okay. That, that seems like a reasonable one. There's lots of states that have gone from five to seven, Nevada being one of 'em, they're similar to us. They did it almost 30 years ago. The question is, is does it do what we're truly trying to do and be in more efficiency? This is a model that could do that. If we could think if it, if there's room for it, then I think we should consider it.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. So I, let me just weigh in as a member of the committee. So, um, the argument in my mind for it increasing the expediency of an efficiency is now you have seven judges instead of five to divide the opinions among to write. And now you've got, um, gotta do some quick math, 14 clerks instead of 10 clerks to help write and research those opinion. So that's, on one hand, that's how it could speed up the process. On the other hand, now you've got, um, more potential judges who could be writing, uh, dissents. And I know in one high profile case within the past six years that one particular judge took two and a half years to write his dissent so that that decision was delayed by all that time. And so, I I I, I, I'm, I, that's my way of agreeing with Senator Musselman. It, it, it, it, it could, um, potentially backfire on us if we had a lot more dissents being written and those judge Juab associate justices right in the dissents, that that could actually slow things down. But I'd have to think if you have the same amount of workload, and by the way, by increasing the judges on the appellate courts, I think we will have more decisions coming to the Supreme Court. It just makes sense to me. If you have 14 clerks to research and write, and seven judges to write, as opposed to 10 clerks and five judges, that that would have a, a multiplier effect.

Um, Senator, I'm curious, I, I heard in your presentation a concern about caseload. We've talked about that a lot as well amongst our committee. I'm curious what conversations you've had with the courts regarding their specific needs to address caseload issues.

Yeah, well, uh, without, um, maybe a confidentiality problem, but I have talked to an appellate court judge who did talk to me about the court, the, the case complexity and the increase of number of cases in the appellate court. So I I, it was a, I'm sure it was a confidential, I don't know if I'm, should, should tell what you know, which, which appellate court judge called me and actually thanked me for the bill and did talk about the case caseload. And also, um, uh, I, I, I have visited, uh, the first district court up in Logan, uh, and actually had conversations with chief, uh, uh, with, with the Chief Justice, uh, Durant up in Logan. And he explained to me again as we had a one-on-one conversation about caseload and about the increase. So I, I, I have had conversations with the Chief Justice and along with one, uh, appellate court judge, uh, about that.

Okay. Um, I'm curious also if you've had conversations with the courts with, I mean, we heard from the Chief Justice, uh, the other day, but conversations regarding their needs in general. Uh, is this something that the courts have have brought to you or have requested?

Um, uh, not that I know of. I've had conversations with Mr. Drexel on different things on, but, uh, other than conversations with the good Senator Weiler and, and Senator Brammer about, uh, the district judges and, and the caseload, I'm not an attorney. And so I'm not in the, the, the, uh, courts. But I think with the conversations I've had with the Chief Justice and the Appellate court and other attorneys, uh, and, and also the district judges in in district one, um, it's obvious that, um, in my opinion, uh, you know, we, we definitely need, uh, system-wide resources increased. Appreciate that. And I think I've used this before also. I, I, I've become a, a huge hockey fan thanks to the Mammoth. And, um, I think Wayne Gretzky's the greatest hockey player, and if I remember his saying was, is why he's so great, is he skates to where the puck was going to be rather than where it is. And I really believe we need to skate towards where the courts need to be as we increase caseload.

I appreciate that. I have another question if I may, Mr. Please. Yeah. Um, I am an attorney, but I myself don't really understand what the Supreme Court needs or how that works. I'm learning a lot in this process as well. Um, we have heard from the courts through their funding requests, of course, we heard the Chief Justice in the state of the judiciary the other day. Um, they have come to us with their specific funding needs. I really trust the courts to tell us what they need, especially as it comes to caseload issues. Um, I'll note that as an, as an attorney myself, uh, practicing in the criminal space. I have clients that are waiting over a year for a jury trial, and they have a constitutional right to a speedy trial. Um, so seeing these things in action is, is concerning to me. And so I appreciate that we're on the same page in terms of wanting to support the judiciary in getting them what they need. But I trust the judiciary to tell us what that is. Um, and so having received funding requests from them, uh, certain RFAs, I'm curious, uh, Senator, if you'll be, uh, if you'll lend your support to the other funding requests that the judici that the judiciary has presented to us,

Uh, and I appreciate that, Mr. Chair, if I can. Yes, please. Um, you know, I, I, um, I have not been involved with the previous years. Uh, I know that, uh, from what, uh, the good chair told me is that for a number of years, Senator Hilliard, uh, would always present a bill every year. And I think Senator Weiler has continued that of what their wants are. Um, I, um, understand, or the chief justice is how he believes that, um, uh, they don't need any more help, but it's obvious, looking at the caseload, they only had 27 rulings in 20 23, 47. In 20 24, 58. In 2025, as I mentioned, 52 of those were unanimous. It's my understanding how the Supreme Court works is they get together as five justices and after they hear a motion, three of those justices get together and decide on that motion. What they do is they allow two other justices to go work on opinions. In my opinion, if you have three in the same process, you have three go working on motions, that'll give you four justices to go work on opinions. To me, that's gonna speed up the system along with these extra law clerks and extra staff. Um, to me, it, it, in my opinion, it's no guarantee because we still have to have people go to work. Um, but, but I believe it will will speed up the process for our citizens. And I'm very glad, and I appreciate the input. Not even even from, uh, Senator Escamilla coming to me, also Senator Weiler and Senator Brammer, uh, with concerns about the district court. And that's one reason why we went together and, and, and we've talked with the governor and, and leadership in the House and the Senate. But, uh, we are trying to fulfill that in giving the resources, the system wide. And as I mentioned, since 1987, if this bill goes through, uh, that's 26 extra judges that we've been able to bring, that's not enough. I'm not gonna tell you that's enough, but it definitely is an attempt. I feel, uh, that we've, we've tried to help out the judiciary and, uh, I think this is another, uh, great, uh, way that we can show our, our support for our judges. We do have, at least in the first district, I don't know the other judges, the first district has some amazing district judges, and they do an amazing job. And they've told me about their, their caseload. And I know in, um, obviously in, in, uh, 2023, the 27 rulings by the Utah Supreme Court, from what I've been told, district judges can do that in a morning, um, depending on what their caseload is. So, uh, I, I felt strongly and appreciate the help from the, the good Chair and Senator Brammer, and also input from, uh, Senator Escamilla that we do need help in these, these, uh, these districts.

Thank you. One final question. Yes, please. By Mr. Chair. Thank you. Uh, Senator, you mentioned some data about the number of cases or the number of rulings that have been issued each year. Um, I have to imagine that the number of rulings that come out are directly proportional to the number of cases that are being brought to the Supreme Court. Do you have any data on what that's looked like on a year to year basis?

I don't, other than last year, again, there were 270 rulings, uh, or not rulings cases filed with the Utah Supreme Court, and there were 58, uh, rulings. So whatever happened to the others, to me that that's a back load. And I, I get, and, and, and I have no animosity. I do appreciate the Chief Justice, uh, Dre, I appreciate him talking with me back in December. Um, but to me it's obvious there's a backlog somewhere there for that many filings, and they can continue to increase with that many rulings. Um, I do not know how many filings there were in 20 23, 24, 25. I'm just looking at where it is right now.

I appreciate that. Um, in my very limited experience practicing on the criminal side, I I do understand that, um, it's certainly possible to present an appeal to the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals, and that under certain scenarios, they have the discretion to not hear that appeal until the case resolves. And I think part of the objective of that is ensuring that a jury makes a decision on, on the case, and that any appealable issues be left to the backend. And so I'd wanna at least point out, uh, the nuances behind some of these appellate issues. Um, I, I'd be interested in seeing that data maybe, maybe offline, if we could take a look and see over time what that, what, what that has looked like in terms of the number of cases that have been brought to the court each.

If I can, Mr. Chair, Yes, Please. Uh, I know that, uh, we have administrators from the court and we will, hopefully they're here and, and they can provide us that information. And I, I agree. That would be interesting to see.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

So please begin. Great, Thank you so much. Good afternoon. My name is Tenille Brown and I'm a law professor at the University of Utah. But because I work there, I do need to make it clear that I speak for myself and I don't, these views do not reflect the views of my employer. SB 1 34, I'm gonna be giving remarks that don't speak to the finances. I really wanna make a prudential argument. Oh, And I should tell you, I I'm gonna give about 90 seconds. Sure. That's great. So I'll, I'll go fast. So, yeah. Okay. So I believe it undermines the legitimacy of our legal system. If we were to use a metaphor of children playing soccer here we have judges. We don't need seven refs. They have one game. Uh, adding more refs just leads to more confusion. At the district court level, you actually have multiple judges who have to decide these cases individually. Uh, the timing here is very, uh, suspicious because if you're worried that your kid is losing and you decide to bring in some refs who are calling fouls that you don't like, when you then win, it doesn't make that victory legitimate. It makes a mockery of the game. This SB 1 34 is no different. Packing the courts for political reasons is wrong, no matter which side is engaging in it. At, at some point we just might say, why even have humans doing this? Why not have Chet GPT If we're trying to get a certain result and we're feeding them our preferred result, um, we really need to make sure we, we worry about the legitimacy of the court system packing the court with friendly judges, delegitimizes every single opinion that a court issues, every divorce, every eviction, every contact contract dispute. Without respect for judicial decisions, our community will be chaos. Property values will drop. People will resort to vigilantism. I have remarkable students at the UI really want them to make sure that they have jobs when they graduate. We can't take this bill in isolation. We have to look at this bill in the context of other bills that are looking to get rid of the, um, independent and, uh, independent nominating commission. And we can't look at this bill in isolation. We need to look at all of the attacks on the judiciary, and we really need to have an independent Juab judiciary for our government to function fairly. Thank you. Thank you.

So at the very beginning, you suggested because they would go from five to seven, that, that somehow would water down or negate the ability for them to make, I'm not sure how you stated it, but it was, I'm just confused at one part. And that is Nevada's at seven. Iowa is at seven. Connecticut's at seven. Arkansas's at seven. Kansas at seven Mississippi's at night. Do all those states just, they, they just can't do the same thing that our court can do, because that's what you just suggested.

I'm suggesting the timing. I was, I had to read No, very,

No, the timing's d you, you bifurcated those two Arguments. So if you're, if you're looking at the timing of having five No, No. You bifurcated those two arguments. You made the argument at the beginning that it was watering down their ability decision and you didn't suggest the timing until Oh, okay. Later in your

Argument. Yeah. So if you have seven Supreme Court justices, I do think it's important to understand how they make decisions. If there are backlogs, you can't infer from those backlogs that there is a lack of resources. It's just like if a faculty member takes too long to grade an exam, adding more faculty members isn't gonna speed it up. We any deadlines? That's

All due respect. That's not what you said at the beginning.

Well, what I, what I was getting at, at the beginning with the move from five to seven is that if you have one soccer game, which is different from a district court, what I was trying to differentiate is a district court has one judge deciding a case before them, and they have massive caseloads that are far bigger than the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, it's one game with the five refs all together. And so if you're adding two, but

If you add two more, It might make it more confusing. It's actually not in, are, are All the states confused that have seven or eight or nine,

Then they're not necessarily confused. But if you're, if you're adding more voices and the court is telling you that this just requires more time for us to schedule our cases, that it's, it is not necessarily efficient. Okay. Uh, but having more calls, uh, I don't think you can also look at the fact that we have unanimous opinions and say that that necessarily is a bad thing. Uh, that can be a sign of a less fractured, less politicized judiciary. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon. Senator Vickers, Stan Rasmussen with Sutherland Institute. Earlier today, we emailed to you our message in support of this bill and for the public record. We'll share a part of that statement from my colleague, Sutherland Constitutional Law fellow William Duncan. This plan to increase the number of judges on Utah's courts is an appropriate way of increasing judicial efficiency without creating the problems associated with efforts to pack a particular court to get different results in court decisions. The Utah Constitution gives the legislative branch the responsibility to make necessary changes to the way courts function. This proposal would help the courts functioning without interfering with their constitutional responsibilities. As has been presented, the state's population has increased such that the increase in the number of judges and justices is needed. And so for these reasons, we encourage your support of this bill. Thank

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. My name is Diane Wanamaker and I represent Mormon Women for Ethical Government, a grassroots organization dedicated to creating more peaceful, just and ethical world. A peaceful ethical government requires a foundation of mutual respect and trust between the branches of government. For this reason, we oppose the portion of SB 1 34 that increases the number of Utah Supreme Court Justices, as has been referred to. The Chief Justice has said that adding more justices will not increase efficiency or improve their accuracy. And they have instead requested funds for additional staff and lower court judges. We support the legislature funding solutions that the judiciary has identified will address bottlenecks in the, in the system. Ethical, uh, behavior is not just about what you do, it's about when and how you do things. And at this time, we urge you to reject partisanship and to rebuild bridges of trust and respect between the legislature and the judiciary. Demonstrate your trust in our impartial professional judiciary. By funding their requests and listening to their concerns, we ask you to vote against increasing the number of Utah Supreme Court Justices. Thank you.

You, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. And thank you to Senator Wilson for bringing this bill forward. My name is Kim Cordova and I am president of the Utah State Bar. My position is an elected position, and I am going to give you comments and thoughts from our, our commission as well as our government relations committee, who is comprised of the chairs of all of our 30 plus committees that, um, are part of the Utah bar that are volunteer and optional for lawyers to be a part of. And so different areas of the law, like family litigation, personal injury, criminal, juvenile, family, all of the different sections are participating in this conversation. And while, um, we, uh, appreciate the, the substitutes and adding the district court judges in the third, fourth, and fifth districts, I think that part of the need of the judiciary and the courts is also juvenile court judges in the fourth district. I think that was one of their priorities at the beginning of the conversation. Um, and so most people have contact, most citizens when we talk about the population growth, most citizens have contact with the lower courts. That is the juvenile courts and the district courts. And where the bottleneck is, is down below. And funding first should stabilize the foundation of the judicial system. And that's really going to be law clerks for the district court and the juvenile court and judicial assistance, judicial assistance make around 21 to $23 an hour. And they are the ones that keep the lower courts running. If you go to a criminal calendar or a civil calendar in, in third district court, it, you could be there from eight 30 in the morning till two o'clock in the afternoon. And then you start up again at two 30 in the afternoon and you go until six. And those judicial assistance are the people who keep the, the, the calendars rolling and they can't retain them because they don't make enough money. And so to stabilize and to get resources and to get cases through the system, there has to be support and financial support on the bottom end to build a stable stabilization to get the efficiency that everybody wants in the, in the higher courts. Um, and so while I appreciate the bill, and I think that it brings up a lot of really good points, um, I think that we are trying to just kind of restructure the conversation to look at resources, um, especially lawyer resources, um, in terms of how many cases they can take. You know, um, the state's, um, the state pays for prosecutors for the attorney General's office, and they give partial money to the Indigent Defense Commission. All other indigent defendants are either, um, have to get prior, uh, private lawyers or they have to get their money through their counties and cities. And so it's a, it's a systemic problem all the way throughout. And I just want this committee to be aware that sometimes an oversimplification of the problem to react on top is when the foundation needs to be, um, put money into. Thank you.

But the two thirds you told us to come over here, two thirds in favor.

Thank you. Thank you, Kim. Nice to see you again. You as well. Um, I wanna go back to your, your point and, and I appreciate, you know, the bar providing this more comprehensive look into this in nonorganic way. 'cause we've been hearing from the courts constantly every year. Um, not only the judge, I mean the Supreme Court justices themselves and, um, the, the courts as an organization and, and entity independent from the legislative branch. And we have this, this, you know, this relationship. So I wanna go back. So, uh, will you say then that the, the, um, the, that you guys as an organization are in support of what their current request is from the courts? Because I, we are, so here's the bottom line. I'm trying to get us where we get the resources that you're describing. 'cause there is an infrastructure component to this. And it, you know, you can have a lot of judges, but if you don't have the staff that actually, uh, puts a lot of this work in place. But what will be the direct task? So if you tell me it is five FTEs on here, or is it exactly as delineated by the courts and their requests?

And so, um, you know, so I'm not completely sure about what the courts are asking for. The information that I received prior to going into, before this bill was filed was that the courts were prioritizing judicial clerks and law clerks, um, district court judges and a juvenile court judge in the, in the fourth district, I think last year, they asked for an appellate judge and it wasn't given to them. Mm-hmm. And so, um, and so I, so I was working off of that. Um, and then when this bill, the, not the, the original bill, not the current, not the subs came before our government relations committee, it was an opposition, but in support of, of Senator Weiler's bill, his other companion bill that increases district court judges and juvenile court judges across the state. And so taking the information and discussion and the support of Senator Weiler's bill that's not before us, and then, and talking about the substitutes today, that adds district court judges in the third, fourth, and fifth. So I think that we are, the bar is in support of that. We do wanna support our judiciary. We wanna be able to get our cases through the court system. But there has to be the foundation of the law clerks and the judicial clerks. You know, when there was talk about the funding for Supreme Court Justice and an appellate court judge, and they each get two law clerks in the district courts. They get one law clerk per three to four judges. And that law clerk isn't even in the, the building. They work from home mostly remotely. And so, um, and so that is an issue. Juvenile court judges, I don't even know if they even get law clerks. And so they're writing all of their own decisions. So they're in court all day hearing their cases, and then they have to go write their own decisions. And so that, and that may contribute to the backlog. And so that's why the resources should be in building foundationally and then building up.

Okay. Thank You. And Mr. Chair, just to we Yes. Clarify. 'cause they make reference to your bill. Is that SB 57?

I believe so, yeah. Okay, perfect. That, That helps. And I wanna make one other clarification. So, um, there has also been a request from the courts for commissioners and commissioners. They're like family law referees. Um, but they, we don't do those in statute. We do those as an RFA. So I do have an RFA for at least one commissioner, um, that will be heard through the executive appropriations process. I'm not saying they'll be funded, but we don't add commissioners in this type of bill. I just want people to understand that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please. And those of you online, I will come to you, I promise. So please.

Good afternoon, uh, Mr. Chair and committee. Thank you. My name is Lynndyl Smith. I'm a resident of Salt Lake City and attorney and a retired law professor as a law professor at the University of Utah for over 30 years, actually 34 years. I oversaw the internship program. We called it the clinical program, where my students worked with all of the courts in this state, the Supreme Court, the Court of appeals, the bankruptcy court, the federal courts, the bankruptcy courts, uh, the district courts. And I became very familiar with the judges in very familiar with the work of the courts. I have my students gained and I have high respect for our courts. I would send the comments, uh, that, um, Senator Pitcher has made and other witnesses have made that we should listen to the courts regarding what their needs are. I find them to be very honorable people who will be straight with you. And if a study needs to be done so that we can learn more about how the courts operate. Great. I want to speak against expanding the judges on the court, on the Supreme Court for efficiency reasons. The courts, the justices on the Supreme Court don't spend much time doing motions. They may divide the work up on motions, but most of their time is spent on doing opinions on real cases. After the case has been heard by all the justices, they meet together. And if you think about a committee meeting, um, every justice gets to say what they think about the case and how they would decide the case. And if you add two members to a committee, it never gets quicker. That discussion. Then they take a, um, a, a, uh, spitball vote of how we're gonna decide this case. And someone is assigned to write that case. Maybe that person has been pre-assigned. It differs from time to time. That person goes back to their chambers with their clerks and they draft an opinion. That's when the work begins. The opinion gets circulated to all the other justices, and the justices communicate and they say, well, I'll go along with it if you change this rationale. Or I can't go along with it if we're only deciding this count. I think we should be deciding that count. And then some of the judges write a concurrence or a dissent and that gets circulated. And the justices say, you know what? I think I'm changed my mind. I agree with the dissenting, um, brother or sister on the court. I think I'm gonna go with them. That's what takes the time. Adding two more people to try to reach consensus. And the amazingly number of cases that were decided unanimously shows that they're working toward consensus, toward opinions that will have more respect in the public. Um, adding two more people is not gonna help that. Um, you can do that in the court of appeals because they sit in panels of three and you add two more people to the seven and you've got nine and you got more panels and you're gonna have more opinions. It's not gonna take longer to do the opinions. It's gonna take longer to do the opinions with more people. Um, I think the resources clearly are needed at the district court level. Whether the resources are ne needed at the appellate level remains to be seen. And the Supreme Court has the ability, I don't know the data on cases that are filed in the Court of Appeals or in the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court has the ability to pour over cases to the Court of Appeals because the Court of appeals has decided an opinion. It's not gonna go to the Supreme Court necessarily. They have to make an argument for cert. And if they don't have an argument for cert, well the Supreme Court shouldn't take it. The Supreme Court has overworked with cases that are big important that they have to decide. You folks have seen some high profile cases of that sort, and it's made a lot of work for courts. If we would stop disputing things, then we would have less work for courts. Um, but I would recommend against expanding the Supreme Court, it's not gonna make it more efficient. They have asked not to have that expanded. You're not gonna make a better working situation by giving people staffers they haven't asked for. And just a slight comment, it risks having the public think this is court packing. Even if that is not the motivation, it does not add credibility to either the courts or to this body. Thank you for your time.

Thank you Ms. Smith. Um, I appreciate you being here. I always appreciate your thoughtful and articulate input. I do have a question for you. Yes. Um, your, your standard of just listen to the courts and fund what they want. Would you apply that to the military? So should Congress just give the military whatever they ask for?

You know, everything's gotta be balanced budget wise. You're, you, you are responsible for the budget and I think, you know, you have to say, well, here's what they want and here's what we can afford.

Okay. So, but I think, I think they are the most knowledgeable people about what they want, what they think they need. Now, you might very well wanna have a study. You might wanna have a study committee to look at. I mean, this idea about Nevada, I'm not sure how that strikes me, but you certainly wouldn't impose that on another body. You might have a, a joint study that looks at efficiencies before the Court of Appeals was created. 'cause I was here working in this job when the Court of appeals was, uh, uh, created. And Justice Durham was the person that spearheaded that. They went into a great deal of work to study how the best way would be to interrelate the Court of Appeals in the Supreme Court for efficiency reasons. And for a long time that worked very well. But, you know, as you say, we've expanded. So I think certainly you can't take, you know, the people who want the money's word for everything. You've gotta have a, um, judgment about it. And you've gotta be fiscally responsible to the taxpayers of the state. Okay. And I guess My point, but working together would be good.

My point is this, like if there was a proposal on the federal level to either expand or to, um, decrease like the joint chiefs of staff, you would listen to the joint Chiefs of staff. But if I was a Congress person, I'd, I'd also probably try to reach an independent decision and not just do whatever they told me. So anyways, that, that was my

Point. I I just think factually, they're probably the most insightful about Sure. What their, what their needs are.

But you understand, as policy makers, we're gonna take that as an input and we're gonna make ultimately a, a, a policy decision.

Listening to the discussion here today, I'm seeing a interest in learning about how things work. Sure. Absolutely. And maybe a lack of knowledge. And that's why I'm suggesting maybe a study that looks at efficiency questions and engages the Supreme Court without dollar figures. Sure. Um, would be a good way To go. One last question. I'll

let you go, I promise. So we're projected to be five, maybe 6 million people by 2055. Is there any point when we should expand the court or should it say five forever?

Not necessarily. Okay. I mean, actually I think if you look at social science, five is the ideal number for reaching agreements. Okay. I think when you get too big,

So all the other states have expanded, have done it wrong,

You know? No, I think, I think, I think there are advantages to having more people from a diversity perspective. As Senator Brammer said, you can get more di you can make sure there's a rural person. You're gonna make sure there's somebody that's from a minority. You go, you're gonna have the possibility of having a more diverse body if you have more people. And I think that has value. I don't know that there's a right size. I just don't think today with the, with the court's request is the time to expand the Supreme Court.

I, I and that's, you know, and you've heard, and to some extent I support a lot of the testimony you've heard. And yes, I do support two thirds of this bill. I certainly support the, uh, addition of additional district court judges. And I certainly, and I support the addition of an additional, uh, additional judge or judges to the court of appeals. Uh, I, and frankly, I agree in large measure with which been said by many of, uh, the folks who oppose the bill regarding the expansion of the Supreme Court. Uh, but I, I come at this, I guess as a fiscal conservative whom I think, which I think probably is consistent with what most of you, uh, uh, feel that you are. And that as, as a fiscal conservative, I see the amount of money that would be spent to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court is, is probably the least effective way to give some assistance to the judiciary right now. Much more effective would be to take that money and add additional District court judges to those that you've already agreed to add. Now in the amendment, uh, personally, uh, I was very supportive of Senator Weiler's, uh, SB 57. And the, and I think it was requesting seven or eight district court judges and one court of appeals judge, if I recall correctly, uh, we need more judges in the Court of Appeals and Senator Musselman. With all due respect, I have very good friends in the Nevada Supreme Court, one of whom is a very close personal friend of mine. And the fact of the matter is, the way the Nevada Supreme Court is, is set up, we don't want to follow that example. It is not a good example. It's a bad example of how to do a court. They have at their court of appeals only a three member court of appeals, which always sits in bank. They have a Supreme Court that has seven members that sits in panels. It's the opposite of, of the most efficient way to do the work. I agree with those who've indicated that. So you Don't wanna take a gamble on the Nevada model? No, I do not want to take a gamble on. I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. And, and you know, I, I have a lot of, uh, I mean, I appreciate the judges and justices down there in Nevada. I just, they would tell you the same thing I'm telling you, uh, about their, their model. We don't want to follow that model. I, I respectfully that would, I would suggest we don't wanna follow that model. And then our court of appeals, because it sits in panels, adding one or two judges to that court of appeals does make it more efficient and allows them to hear more cases. Adding justices to the Supreme Court will, unfortunately, I do think, um, uh, slow down the process. I, I sat as a district court judge for 15 years. I had the opportunity on at least a half a dozen occasions to sit with the Supreme Court. If you have questions about how they decide their cases, I'm happy to answer any of those questions. But the fact of the matter is, as has already been expressed, once an opinion is written, and that's sort of the easy part of it, if you will, once an opinion is written and then it has to be circulated among all the other justices, That's where the time consuming part is.

Just a quick question, and I apologize. I stepped out for a moment. But doesn't Nevada also elect their judges?

Yes, Thank you. That's all. Yeah, I don't want to gamble on that either.

Yes, I did. Okay. I signed in a long time before when I

Thank You. Thank you. Um, My name's Jackie Rosen. I'm a practicing attorney. Um, I'm here on my own behalf. I'm a member of the state bar, and I practice primarily at the district court level. Some appeals as well. Um, I just have three quick points that I think have largely been stated by others. Um, first, as we heard earlier from Ms. Cordova, district court, judges frequently share about three to four judges for one clerk. Um, meanwhile, this proposal is for two, two clerks for an appellate court judge. Um, I think that's probably why we are seeing such a backlog in district court cases. Um, the funding requests for staffing in particular at the lower court levels would be very appreciated. Second, um, there has been some discussion, I believe Professor Smith mentioned pour over jurisdiction, which we have in the state of Utah. Um, essentially the court's, the appellate court method in Utah is not the same as on the federal level. So instead of appealing, like in the federal case from district court to the 10th circuit to the court of the Supreme Court in Utah, for most cases, you appeal from the district court directly to the Supreme Court. And then the Supreme Court decides whether or not to take the case or to pour it over to the, to the appellate court level. Um, and so when we're seeing, so relatively few cases decided by the Supreme Court, that is intentional, um, they have chosen what, which cases to accept and which cases to pour over. So I don't think the increase of numbers of judges to the Supreme Court level would change that number very much.

That's fine. That's all I have. But thank you for Your time. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Uh, and thank you to the sponsor, uh, Senator Wilson. Um, And I do need you to state your name. So Yeah, Nate Alder. I was getting to that. Nate Alder. Um, I'm here on behalf of myself. I happen to be a lawyer, uh, 30 years. And, uh, uh, also a mediator, which I'd like to talk about. Um, I'm gonna make a couple quick points, which is, this is a fundamental change to a co-equal branch of government. Um, I'm, I drove through Cache Valley during, uh, Senator Wilson's campaign, and I loved his signs, which said, it's time. And I will ask the sponsor and perhaps this body, is it time to change fundamentally the judiciary? And so I echo what Professor Brown said about the timing. Now I'm here sitting on this. This is the Judge Connor's seat, two thirds of the bill. It's the two thirds of this, uh, proposal I love. I see, I see lawyers every day. Um, I'm typically mediating a case Monday through Friday, sometimes twice a day. So I'll have two lawyers, maybe four lawyers, uh, working with me every day. And their needs are great. They need to get into court. They need to see a judge. And waiting six months, five months, three months for a judge is hard for their clients. And I hear about it for hours and hours about scheduling with a district court judge. Um, you name it, a probate judge. We need to have our taxpayers, who are our litigants, our disputes in court. Now, a very few of those folks will be in the Supreme Court. And so I would ask this committee to defer the one portion of this proposal, which is problematic, which is the five to seven, which is the fundamental change of a coequal branch of government. Let's study it like Professor Smith says, let's hold it for a period of time. Let's work with the court. And guess what? I wanna talk about mediation and a DR and what Los Angeles County Superior Court did in the 1980s. They Uintah mandatory mediation of all filed cases, which we could do in the state of Utah. We've dabbled with that in probate. We dabbled with that in, um, in family court. We could go, we could go full scale. We have an a DR program that is not being addressed here with, with, with additional court funding. We could really get to efficiency through mediators, through facilitators, through court rosters, through a large investment in a DR. And I appreciate your consideration.

And I'll just say, Mr. Alder, based on my practice, I, I don't think there's a district court judge that's given me a trial date in the last five to seven years without trying mediating and often a judicial settlement conference on top of it. So

It, it would be great. I talked to a, a district court judge recently too. And, um, they say they want to do more settlement conferences. They would love to get to a one day a week, uh, settlement conference schedule and four days a week on the bench, I've talked to judges and I say this, I say, guess what? I'm settling your cases. And they say, not fast enough, not enough, not enough cases, and not fast enough. I'm proud of the cases that we're settling for the district court, but they're saying not fast enough and not enough need. Your, I think you just need to be better. We Need, we need resources at this. I'm saying I'm two thirds of the bill I love, we need resources at the foundational portion of the, of the court, which is the entry level portion of the court. And this is just not the time for the top court.

Thank you Chair, uh, chase Thomas with the Better Utah Institute. Uh, despite previous proposals three years ago, uh, to expand the Supreme Court, the context of current political tension following controversial decisions does matter. Uh, making structural changes to the court in such an environment risk, creating the appearance that judicial decisions are being answered with institutional redesign. While the legislature clearly has constitutional authority over the number of justices on the Supreme Court, the separation of powers depends on exercising that authority with restraint, especially when changes could affect how judicial Independence is perceived by the public courts function best when they're insulated from political pressure. And public trust in the judiciary is strengthened when structural changes are driven by long-term institutional need rather than short-term disagreements. Uh, for these reasons, we respectfully ask you to vote no on SB 1 34. Thank you.

Um, yes, my name is Kathy Campbell. Kathy, I do Not, I can't see you. Yes. I don't know why my camera is not working.

I don't think that's Fair. Well, that's,

It took a minute for Zoom to switch over. Are you seeing

Thank you. Thank you so much. My name is Freya Johnson and I reside in Salt Lake County. Um, I'm an attorney, specifically an appellate attorney. So I appear regularly in both the Court of Appeals in the Utah Supreme Court. I, uh, greatly appreciate the legislature's desire to devote resources to the judiciary, particularly where the judiciary has identified needs such as for support staff and for judges in the district court and court of appeals. Um, which here are the cases that affect, uh, the greatest, uh, number of Utahans on a daily basis? I am concerned about adding two judges to the Supreme Court, uh, for three reasons. The first reason is that it seems to me that this expanses the greatest cost increase, uh, for the, for the branch of the judiciary, that here's the fewest number of cases. So the Supreme Court hears far fewer cases than the Court of Appeals, far, far fewer cases than the District Court. Um, but as Senator Weiler mentioned, there's a higher salary for appellate court, uh, judges. There's a 5% higher cost for their salaries. I'm also concerned that, um, appointing additional Supreme Court judges would result in costs to remodel the Matheson Courthouse. The courthouses that currently is has five chambers and the hallway dedicated to the Supreme Court judges and space for five judges on the, uh, bench in the Supreme Court courtroom. And I'm concerned that there would be additional costs, um, associated with increasing the capacity of the courtroom to, um, uh, to handle the additional judges. I'm also concerned that the judiciary hasn't requested the additional judges and hasn't identified, uh, the need for additional judges on the Utah Supreme Court, uh, as a means of proposing efficiency. From my own experience, both clerking for a judge on the, uh, justice on the Utah Supreme Court, and appearing regularly before the Utah Supreme Court and having it decide my cases, uh, delays and complications tend to result from complex issues, from split opinions with concurrences, with dissents. Uh, and as Professor Smith, uh, just described the process to this, uh, committee a moment ago, uh, the process involves circulating the opinion through all the justices and having them all come to agreement, which involves significant revisions as the opinions go back and forth as authors decide to write dissents and concurrences. And it, it's my belief that that process would be increased by adding two additional judges who would be, um, you know, potential dissenters, potential occurrences, and certainly ones who would have thoughts about how the final opinion would be shaped one way or another.

Hoping to get to that point. So thank you for your consideration.

Okay. Um, I am just making a comment as a concerned citizen, so not as, um, in the know about all the nitty gritty, uh, I'm in Cash County, by the Way. Thank you. Um, I did want to put in my input as a concerned, um, constituent that if this bill continues forth, um, in its current state, with all of the concern, including my own, about adding new Supreme Court justices at this time, when it has not been requested, that it would not be, uh, as positively motivated, one might hope it sounds like, to be on lower courts rather than in the Supreme Court. And if that Supreme Court increase gets pushed through, that would certainly cause concern for me and a lot of the people that I know that we are not continuing with co-equal branches of government. And that's essentially the essence of my comment.

Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity. Um, my name is Samuel Adams, as you pointed out. I live in Salt Lake County. I'm not representing any organization or founding father. Um, so I have no special qualifications except That I'm a strong any, any beer brands? No. I might be a little better off if I were Okay. Just checking. Um, Just a strong believer in our public institutions. Um, so I wanted to share a brief historical parallel highlight, an unusual provision in the bill. Uh, in 1937, there was an attempt to expand the US Supreme Court following several unanimous decisions that hindered the agenda of the trifecta in Washington. Uh, the president cited an overlooked docket as justification at the time in an ideologically diverse coalition of justices communicated its perspective and that it wasn't behind on its caseload. The Senate Judiciary Committee in that instance, controlled by the president's own party in a super majority Congress rejected the bill as an encroachment on judicial Independence. The political branches eventually achieved their goals through the conventional avenues of appointments and litigation, while preserving the court's long structure. SB 1 34 also includes an unusual provision allowing it to take effect immediately. Most legislative changes take effect on an ordinary timetable after the session concludes. And I worry that enacting an immediate expansion of our highest court, while high profile legal disputes or pending risks, the appearance of engineering the bench to address specific cases, I would urge an amendment to follow a timetable that would mitigate this impression of disrupting our constitutional balance. So I would respectfully ask the committee to honor the precedent of institutional restraint, reject the Supreme Court expansion provisions at this time. Or if you believe that those must be provided for during this session, I'd ask each to postpone the effective date until current disputes are settled. Thank

Yeah. Sorry, I was having some, a technical No, you're fine. Um, you've all heard from multiple people here today, uh, who have a lot of illegal experience and they are telling you that this is not helpful to the judiciary. Many have said that they're in favor of two thirds of this bill, and I hope that you listen to them, especially when it's not what you want to hear. Unfortunately, the entire Republican party, both in Utah and beyond, have been attacking the judicial branch and working to undermine it to suit their needs. The Utah Supreme Court has given the Utah legislature multiple losses due to the unconstitutional nature of their workings. And rather than fixing their bills, they've decided to attack the judiciary directly. You can lie to yourself and you can lie to your party all you want, but we can see these attempts and name them for what they are, which is court packing and attacking checks and balances. I'm obviously not in favor of this bill.

Thank you very much. Um, I just wanna state for the record, I have not attacked the court or its integrity and, and the vast majority of my colleagues in the legislature have not. So I can't control what everyone says, but, um, I have a great deal of respect for the judges, including Judge Gibson and, and the other judges that, uh, have made some rulings against the legislature. Alright, I'm gonna close the public hearing and bring it back to the committees, uh, to the sponsor.

I appreciate it, Mr. Chair. And I know the time is, you guys have got a lot of time, uh, ahead of you on on, on your last, uh, bill. Uh, let me just, uh, sound by saying this is a, this I think is a better honorable attempt to try and get system-wide resources. And when you look at, uh, 35 states that either have seven or nine justices, they're obviously functioning properly. Um, and I think it's time after what around 108, nine years that it is time to bring our, our, uh, state supreme Court up to the same level as other states that are the same size. Uh, let me, let me just also mention is something that, uh, chief, our Chief Justice said in his, uh, remarks to the legislature, as he said, thank you for your role in adopting and implementing a selection process that has built an honorable and conscientious judiciary in which citizens can have confidence. And I believe that we'll be able to find, uh, some more judges that will be honorable and conscientious. And so I ask for your support and, uh, in, in expanding this system-wide resources.

Thank you. Um, you ready for committee action? Yes. I move that this committee favorably recommend first substitute Senate bill 1 34, which includes the amendment made by Senator Brammer.

Yeah. And I appreciate the motion. I, you know, I've had my own concerns on, on this mostly because I, I've been kind of the biggest proponent on, you know, the, the declining number of decisions with regards to the Supreme Court over the years, that that's been a big problem in our state. That people are been waiting for justice or there being funneled to other courts when the Supreme Court, uh, could have handled things. Um, I'm not, I I think the court's doing better. I'm not sure that this solves that necessarily. I think it can, it can improve it. Um, but I'm also the chair of the appropriations for, you know, over the courts. And I see the desperate need that the courts have had for some of these additional, uh, trial court judges. I mean, Utah County has been growing. They've accepted 40% of the state's growth, and they haven't had a new judge in over 20 years. Um, and that, that was what my, Not a new judge, but an additional position. An additional position in, yeah, like a new position within their courts. And I, my area absolutely needs it. And there's other areas that, you know, you, everyone can fight about whether five or seven. That's, I mean, I do think that when you have a larger body, it makes for wiser decisions and that's why you have a multi pan. You know, that's why you have a panel of judges. But the issue that I care about the most is getting those additional resources. And frankly, both the chair and I have been kind of fighting for that and horse trading for that to get those additional resources into our courts. And it's been a, this is the, the fastest expansion of district court and appellate court judges since the creation of the Court of appeals. And it's the most resources that have gone into the court all at once in a long, long time. And, and that was something that we felt was imperative for us to take care of right now. Because when you get down to that trial court level, our trial, our district court judges work incredibly hard. They're trying their best and their caseloads are out of control and they need help. And this was a way that, that we could try to get that, uh, in line and, and try to get some help on that. And so, um, for that reason, for the additional resources that are going to the courts, I am in support of this. Thank you.

Thank you. And before I go to Senator Pitcher, I just want to add, because it's relevant here. I I was involved in a, an appeal last year, uh, from a case that was decided on summary judgment. And like most cases filed with Supreme Court, it was poured over to the Court of Appeals. We filed a motion and said, Hey, we think this is a, a matter of first impression, we'd really like the Supreme Court to hear it. And they did. So I just want to give them credit for that. But I also wanna say before 1987, the Utah Supreme Court heard every appeal. And I do think that with, with their own changes of court rules, they could take on more cases if they chose to. Um, so I just wanna throw that out there as well. Uh, Senator Pitcher.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I'll be opposing the motion to recommend favorably Today. Can you pull your microphone closer? No, but I can scoot closer. I'll turn two on. Okay. Okay. I'll try that again. Um, I, I'm, uh, I'll oppose the motion to favorably recommend today. Um, I appreciate the comments and, and the data that's been provided. I think we have never been a state to do something just because other states do things. Um, we do things out of necessity and out of good data. Um, and, and good logic behind that. Um, I appreciate the sub and the amendments that have been made. And, um, certainly I think we all recognize that the lower courts need more resources and more judges. I don't see them as being enough to meet the most critical needs of the courts right now. I think what we've heard in public testimony, at least what I've heard in public testimonies today, is that we all care about these caseload issues. Uh, we have a perception of caseload issues, but perhaps not great data to back that up. We're not really a good understanding of what's causing them. Um, one thing that I think is clear from the judiciary is that our lower courts need resources that the caseloads, uh, have increased dramatically and that the resources that the legislature is providing is not enough. Um, I also think that optics are important. We've heard, um, testimony about that today. And I think myself understanding where things stand with, uh, the redistricting litigation and the tension that's been created from, from the, uh, between the judiciary and the legislature, um, has created an optics issue that whether we believe we're, uh, pursuing this legislation or not, the optics are, are important. And, you know, I think too about the caseload issues, um, that we have here at the legislature. If you look at the data, I saw something the other day, um, and maybe there's a date I want here that can confirm this, but I think we're, uh, uh, 200 bills. We filed 200 more bills this year at this time than last year. Um, we have our own Caseload issues. Are you bragging or No, I'm just kidding. Not necessarily. Well, we have our own caseload issues, and I don't know that any of us feel that, uh, adding additional legislators would address that, that, uh, that problem. I think that we would all recognize that we could benefit from policy analysts, from drafting attorneys, that there are things that we could do on the lower end to help us with that problem. But adding additional legislators wouldn't necessarily address our caseload issues either. Um, ultimately I trust the judiciary to tell us what they need. Um, I don't think that this is the solution. And so I'll be voting. No,

Thank you. And I, before I go to Senator Musselman, um, and then to Senator Escamilla. I just wanna note, I absolutely agree with Senator Pitcher that the court needs more resources. And I also have to point out that just like Judge Gibson did in the redistricting case, they can also order the parties to do their research for them by asking for supplemental memoranda. And I appear in court regularly. I've had three trials in the last two months. And in every instance, the judge asks me or the other attorney to draft the order or both of us to submit proposed findings of facts. So I'm just saying the judges have some ability to shift that work on the attorneys if they don't have enough clerks. I'm not arguing that they shouldn't have more clerks. I'm agreeing that they should. But they do have some bandwidth flexibility by making the attorneys paint the fence for them, just like, um, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. So, uh, Senator Musselman, are you ready? He's mostly ready. Oh, well, we'll go to Senator Escamilla first.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, so one, I I, this has been a, a really good way of engaging in, in the public. Um, I represent the west side of Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County West Valley City, Magna. And one of the biggest issues related to family law specifically is access. So I've, for years we've been having this conversation and I wanna first say that I've been pastoring the good senator, the sponsor of the bill on addressing the issues of, of resources has been pretty clear that this will come in this comprehensive way. And I think some of this, uh, clearly the substitute and the amendments, uh, starts addressing that lower court, um, needs. And I, this is just the first step. So I, I'm gonna be working with a good senator. Um, this is very important and, and we've discussed this in media availability in front of the, the cameras, which is always very uncomfortable sometimes that, um, there are perception issues, but there's also a whole structural piece. And we're getting closer. I'm here, I've been talking also to the courts. The courts have been, they're always very transparent of what they need, and they come forward with those needs. And I'll be begging for more of those resources. And I'll be voting yes on the bill in good faith coming, moving forward. 'cause I think what we need is that first portion to happen. And, and that is something that I, I recognize is gonna require the support of the legislature, complete legislature to get us there. And I am desperate for commissioners. We're desperate for, you know, and those commissioners as explained by, um, the chairman won't happen on a bill like this. It will have to go through an RFA and that will go through our, our budget process. So I, our, I can say that collectively, the Senate Democrats have always said, our courts need to be treated with respect and get all the resources they need. This, get us a little bit closer to those resources. And I, you know, thank you for listening because we've been, you know, like knocking your door and, and you've been open to saying where are those needs? Which some of them are the same as the rest of, I think our, our colleagues. Uh, it is, it's always difficult because we wanna make sure also the public knows that we're listening and this is important, but I, we're not changing the process on getting this judges appointed. So that appointment process is the same. We've had a really, well, there is a bill to change that, but Correct. So not in this bill. So just to be clear, because we've heard that people say they're trying to change that, and I know that's another piece of legislation. Yeah. In the house. In the house. Um, so I, I I wanna clarify that, that there is another piece of legislation coming that is addressing that piece for the purpose of this legislation. If it passes as is the appointment of judges will be the same, which is the governor appoints and recommends to the Senate. Senate confirms I think, which has been the case in all the current court, um, judges that we have. And I think that's something that's important to just be clear that this bill does not change the alters that process. But there is another one in the house, but there's a lot of things happening in the house, um, that's scary. So, you know, with that said, I, I know I I, we will interact with our constituents. A lot of constituents are very concerned about lack of resources in courts and moving those pieces. And we, we will continue with our work. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Senator Musselman. Thank you, Mr. Chair for, uh, your gracious and allow us to each, to kind of explain our positions here. And because this is a complex issue and it is a, it, it, it sets a precedent, it moves a great deal of good, I think, into our courts as far as, um, you know, ability to effectively do things well. And I'm, I'm hopeful for that. And I, I get, there's some reservations as well. In fact, I still have reservations and, um, uh, I, I don't know where I'm gonna be, uh, as it moves forward. I am, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm balancing company issues. You know, it's, it's, if you are, if you remove the, the, the, the current climate we're in, and if we just looked at this purely as a policy and, and we could do that in a vacuum, let's say, is the policy right. And that's what I've been trying to do. Um, and I'm leaning towards the, the, there's, there's a basis for building that. Yeah. That the policy could be right. But we're not in a vacuum. And I, I, I hear what, uh, Senator Pitcher just said. There's, there's this, there's this atmosphere out there that is, makes it difficult. We don't make decisions of vacuum. And we have to consider not only things that are just policy driven, but outside of that as well. And it, it weighs heavily on me. Um, so the other question that I fact that, uh, that, uh, the good chair asked of one individual that was testifying, when is a good time? And there may never be a good time. Right. And I suppose maybe if we asked the judges now, or if we asked them 20 years ago, if we asked 'em 20 years from now, they probably would say, no, it's not a good time. I, I would bet my bottom dollar on that. So the question is, is when, who makes the decision? Well, it's us. And when is the good time? This may not be the best good time, but the policy, I think is, is right. I'm gonna lean towards voting it here in committee, but that I'm not committing that vote further. We'll, we'll have to talk further, but as far as, um, judge Connors, you've got a great smile, by the way. You could tell me that I'm, I have a dumb idea of just with that smile, and I think I'd be okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sorry about that. I'm trying to, trying to organize my notes here and, uh, try and make it as quickly as possible. I know that many of you, uh, have reservations not on the bill, but, uh, for dinner. So I'll try and make this quickly. So it's good to be with you again. Chair, uh, Kenny members, staff members, it's good to see you. Also, I, if I could start off on second substitute, 1 34 SB 1 34. Lemme give you a little bit of a, of a history background. Um, of course, the, the state, uh, became a state in 1896. At that time, we had three, uh, justice Court, or Justice Court, sorry, Supreme Court Justices, uh, at that time. Uh, so, uh, uh, Utah had 276,000, uh, people in 1917 that was expanded from three justices to five on our Supreme Court. At that time, roughly, Utah had around 444,000, uh, people. And of course, today, um, this bill is looking to expand the Supreme Court, who now our current population is around three and a half million. That's been 108 years since we've expanded the Supreme Court. Uh, back in 1987 is when, um, the Court of Appeals, um, was, was created by the legislature. At that time, we had 1.7 million, uh, citizens Today, we've doubled that to 3.5. And when the appellate court or Court of Appeals was created in 1987, uh, they created, they had seven justices on the Court of Appeals. Uh, the average appellate court size in the state of Utah, or state of the country is 12 judges. Uh, currently, um, as far as the Supreme Court goes, um, there are 15 states with five justices. There are 35 states with between either seven or nine justices. Uh, the 10 closest states to Utah's population all have seven to nine justices. If I may talk just a little bit, um, about the Utah Supreme Court, uh, there's a little bit, uh, I have that the Utah Supreme Court had 58, um, decisions last year. Uh, there's been, some people say it's 61, but somewhere between 58 and 61. Out of those, there were 52 unanimous and roughly six dissenting opinions. So by far, there was a unanimous in the Supreme Court, 58 decisions 20 25, 47 in 2024. And there's only 27 decisions in 2023, uh, which, which I was told is the lowest production in the country for State Supreme Courts in, uh, during, um, and over the last decade, the average number of, of cases or decisions they've had has been 61 over the last 20 years. It's 72. So we realized that the, you know, the previous decade of this one, um, they had a lot more rulings if the average was dropped down for the, for the, uh, for, for what the production's been the last few years. Now, let me just mention to you here, um, the physical year, 2025 filings, uh, in the Supreme Court in 2025, there was 270 filings on the Court of Appeals. There was 1,143 filings, and that's a increase of around 7%, um, year over year increase. Um, and what, what my original bill, and this, let me just tell you a little bit about in talking with these good Senator Ipson in the, in, in the, the Senate, um, if I may, Senator Weiler talked about in his committee that he's been talking about doing this, expanding the Supreme Court for about three, three and a half years. And, and, uh, a good representative by name of Jefferson Moss, maybe you've heard of him last session, he had a bill that was going to expand the Supreme Court, and for whatever reason, uh, he decided to hold off. I think it was his, uh, understanding or his, uh, his desire to wait and pull, bring it back this year, uh, to run it. So, uh, a few months ago when our, our, our good governor, uh, governor Cox came out in support of expanding the Supreme Court, um, he started looking into it and, um, you know, started to get some data and some evidence, if you will, behind, um, expanding both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. And when the governor came out in support of doing that, uh, started looking and, uh, started formulating this, this bill. Now let me tell you what happened. Um, we had, uh, Senator Weiler who had been working and, and we are listening, uh, to the judiciary, to the courts. Uh, during the committee hearing, uh, he, uh, subbed the bill with discussions with myself. And we, we added to this bill, uh, district court judge in both districts three, which is Salt Lake County and also districts five, which is St. George. Those were the two districts that the courts had identified as the areas of the most need. Um, and during that, uh, committee hearing, uh, that was substituted, which was, was passed, um, and then it was amended, uh, by Senator Brammer, who's an attorney who, who, uh, practices mostly in District four, which is the Utah County. So what this bill does is not only adds to justices, the Supreme Court, it adds us to justices to the Court of Appeals. But now current, the current version, uh, after listening to the, uh, judiciary has added three more district judges to districts three, four, and five, which have been identified of the areas of most need. Let me, um, tell you a little bit what what this will do. And I, I have a number of people ask, what does this include? This includes seven judges. So it includes three district court judges, two court of appeal judges, and two Supreme Court judges. It also includes nine and a half law clerks, which are attorneys that research, they do precedents, a lot of 'em, let's be honest, probably do most of the work behind the scenes. And what this does, the nine and a half there, there's basically gonna be eight, which is two law clerks for both the Court of Appeals and also the Supreme Court. So each one of those judges are gonna receive two, uh, law clerks in the district courts. They each share a half of a person. So that's where the one and a half comes from nine and a half. It also includes seven judicial assistance. So this bill, and I'll, I'll go over the, uh, the, the, uh, physical note is a 23 and a half increase, uh, for the number of, i I, I'd like to call it system-wide resources. Um, plus it does include one-time money to alter and, and update the Supreme Court to add the two more seats, um, in all the physical note. And I'd be happy to go over it more, Mr. Chair, if there's a desire ongoing of $4.6 million, one time of $1.8 million. Uh, I know it's a tough budget year. I think that this legislature has, has put this as a high priority. Uh, obviously it's something where I'm gonna have to try and get, get funded, but I think it's a, it's been a priority obviously for our governor and also for our leadership in both the Senate and the House. And during that committee hearing, I wanna, I want you to be aware that I did receive bipartisan support in the committee, and so I was, I was very pleased about that. Um, again, before when the Court of Appeals was, was, uh, created in 1987, there were 66 judges in the old way. It had district courts and the old circuit court judge set up, um, before this bill, there are currently, uh, 78 district court judges. So we've added about 12 district court judges, uh, in the last 38 years. So, um, again, system-wide resources, uh, for judiciary that I think we all agree, uh, needs the resources. Now let me, let me just read to you. Um, I think we all may have received, at least in the Senate, we just, we received a judiciary report, and if I can read from the report from the Utah judiciary, and it says the Appellate courts, which is both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court experienced records setting caseload growth in fiscal year 20 25, 20 24, and 2025 were two of the three highest filing years in the past decade and physical year 2025 recorded the highest number of appellate filings in the history of both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. This sustained increase in filings reflects growing demand for appellate review and increasing pressure on existing judicial resources. So it's obviously judiciary report, they talk about the increased filings and obviously the pressure we know about increased filings. It's also in talking to my friends or people that are on the, uh, the, uh, uh, the judges, uh, I've had, I've had a phone call from, uh, an appellate, uh, court of Appeals Justice and also talked with, um, the first district judges about case complexity is increasing. So the amount of research and the amount of, of, of, um, discussion I think has increased with the last few years. Um, I, there's been some talk about, um, you know, we're, this is just nothing more than we're trying to pack the courts in, in his, uh, remarks to the legislature, uh, chief Justice Grant, uh, his, he stated, and he talks about the process of selecting new judges, which is the same as it's been with selecting the, the, the, basically the, of course, the governor, uh, appoints and the Senate, uh, confirms, and this is what Chief Justice Dur talks about that process. He says, you saw the success of the Utah Merit-based model firsthand with your recent confirmation of Justice John Nielsen, and throughout the year when you confirmed many outstanding trial court judges, thank you for your role in adopting and implementing a selection process that has built an honorable and conscientious judiciary in which citizens can have confidence. It's the same process as we're gonna go through to select seven more judges. Now, I did substitute the bill on the floor of the Senate and we added, after I had the governor's, um, staff, and also CCJJ came to me and said, we're concerned. We don't really have a process of who do we select first. And we, they thought it was appropriate as, as we did, as we substitute it, that we should, they should concentrate on the two Supreme Court justices first and then move down to the appellate court, and then the, the district courts, which makes sense that you'd wanna to fill the Supreme, fill the Supreme Court. Uh, first, um, Mr. Chair, uh, i, I think, uh, um, these resources, again, these are system-wide with both district. This, uh, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court are long overdue. It's been 109 years since we've expanded our Supreme Court. Again, uh, there's 35 states with seven to nine justices. Again, the 10 closest all have seven to nine justice in population to Utah. We know there's growing cases. We know the complexity is increasing, and if I can, you're gonna have a many people, uh, with opinions on, you know, what they think and what they shouldn't. But let me, let me finish, uh, Mr. Chair with a, a statement from Governor Cox that he, he had in an interview, uh, about opinions, and I think these opinions matter. Most states, our side or bigger have gone to seven or nine Supreme Court justices. I think that makes sense. Governor Cox, when I was interviewing justices for the Supreme Court, almost every one of them said they were worried about the wait times for decisions coming out and felt that we needed more support, both at the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. I think it's, it's obviously you're gonna have, you know, people talk differently. I think we have statements from the judiciary talking about case filings and increases and, um, I, I don't think there's been a bigger, um, commitment from this legislature and, uh, to, to the judiciary. And we obviously know that, uh, article eight Section two allows this legislature, uh, to choose how many judges and how, how we fund the judiciary. But this is a big co uh, a big commitment not only for judges, but especially the law clerks and the, uh, staff and the others that we know usually are the ones that maybe do the most work behind the scenes. Sorry if that's offending any judges. I know the judges do their part, but, uh, we know here in the legislature, our staff is amazing and we are only able to do what we are because of a great staff. So, uh, with that, uh, Mr. Chair, I know the time is short and it looks like you're looking a little hungry. Um, so I am going to, uh, conclude, uh, my remarks.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be brief. Um, Senator Wilson, do you know, I think you said 270 cases were filed with the Utah Supreme Court last year? Is that, That's what my numbers are, yeah. Okay. Do you know how many of those were not taken up due to issues with standing or ripeness or mootness? Uh, I do not. Okay. But, uh, um, no, I don't. Let's that Okay. Thank you. That was a long Shot. I figured I'd ask. Yeah, no, it's okay. Yeah. Okay. Appreciate it. I'm not an attorney, as you know. Yeah. So yeah, three Years. It's okay, we have like a hundred, there's, there's someone in here that knows that. Thank you. Okay. Um, how many, speaking of attorneys, how many attorneys did you just say were gonna give new jobs too? Would you clarify that? Uh, yeah. 23 and a half increase, uh, in the judiciary. That, that, that's what my, in, in trying to read. And the, uh, the fiscal note is obviously created, uh, by the judiciary, by the courts and, and trying to read all the numbers and, and what they, the numbers. So yeah, that's 23 and a half to, to all three. Uh, I think, like I said, I think system-wide resources. Okay. And so for, you said six and a half million, is that what you said? Uh, yes. And some of that's ongoing Sometime one time. Okay. Plus one time plus one time money. So we're gonna take eight, $8 million or so and, uh, give it to more attorneys. Is there a question there or comment? I'm just clarifying, I'm making sure everybody understands. Okay. Okay.

Let, lemme just, let me make sure I'm clear. The ongoing is 4.60, okay. The one times 1.8. And so you're looking at ongoing of 4.6. Okay. Um, yeah, Four. So that only to get to eight, close to that, if I combine that with the, the other bill with McPherson's bill, so I understand.

Oh, okay. And I, I not Familiar with didn't do do math in Cash Valley Senator, So I'm sorry, I'm a Logan High graduate. I do need a little bit of Slack, Sian. Okay. Alright,

So my name's Kathy Adams. I represent myself. I support SB 1 34 with an amendment to exclude the addition of two new justices to the Supreme Court. Everyone in this room has read the fiscal note and heard from the Utah bar and the justices themselves that this expansion would be counterproductive. So what I'd like to address is the committee shopping that appears to have occurred to get this out of committee and onto the house floor last week when SB 1 34 passed out the Senate, it typically would've gone to the House Judiciary Committee Committee, but it didn't. So I have to assume there just wasn't a buy-in in that committee. So they bounced it to the business committee where, again, I'm going to guess that that committee members leaned towards actually putting the increased funding toward district and juvenile court courts where the backlog of cases actually exist. So now we have the, the law enforcement and, you know, adding judges to ensure a predetermined outcome works great for pet cases like gerrymandering. But I don't think constituents believe that when their minor gets caught for shoplifting or their business goes bankrupt, that is headed for the Supreme Court. No, it will languish with the other 8,000 backlog cases in juvenile and district courts that actually could have benefited from the 6 million that was funneled to expand the Supreme Court.

My name is Sue Whitson, born and raised in Utah. Yeah. Ancestors with names on statues. Okay. On both sides. We're here before Brigman. I would guess that each one of us has worked an entry level job where we can see a problem and have had an idea to fix it, taken it to management, and it's been ignored. Then corporate brings in a policy maker that's never worked our job, and they come up with a policy that often appears to cost a lot of money that doesn't fix the problem. That is, I see the portion of this bill adding two more people to the State Supreme Court. We heard just previously that Governor Cox says what the judiciary said. I sat through the Senate hearing last week. I hear, I have yet to hear what the state Supreme Court has said. I hear what people say, they are saying, but I haven't heard from the Supreme Court itself. They are the ones who know what they need. Okay. The legislature from my viewpoint, is acting like corporate management and ignoring those, working with the existing system and implementing their own solution. I ask that you listen to those in the judicial branch fund, what they need, not what you want. Thank you. Go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. My name is Leslie Zabriski and I live in Centerville. I'm here representing Mormon Women for Ethical Government, or MWE for short. MWE is a non-partisan grassroots organization dedicated to creating a more peaceful, just and ethical world. We've been disheartened by mis me by Media reports of increased tension between Utah's legislature and judiciary. A peaceful ethical government requires a foundation of mutual respect and trust between the branches of government. For this reason, we oppose the portion of SB 1 34 that increases the number of Utah Supreme Court justices. Matthew Durant, the Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court has said that adding more justices will not create efficiency or improve their accuracy. The judiciary has instead requested funds for additional staff and lower court judges. The state bar agrees that increased staffing, not more Supreme Court justices will address delays. We support the legislature funding solutions that the judiciary has identified will address the bottlenecks in the system. Ethical behavior is not just about what you do, it's about when and how you do things. At this time, we urge you to reject partisanship and rebuild bridges of trust and respect between the legislature and judiciary. Demonstrate your trust in our impartial professional judiciary. By funding their request and listening to their concerns, we ask you to vote against increasing the number of Utah Supreme Court Justices. Thank you.

My name is Caroline Collette. I'm from Representative White's District. Um, it is a little known fact that when Supreme Court Justices address a case, each judge is involved utilizing their own time, resources, and staff to help them study the intricacies of the facts and arguments. With this in mind, it is nonsensical to believe that adding additional justices would expedite any process for them. This is supported by the fact that our own Chief Justice has expressed dissatisfaction or not, not favor for adding additional justices to the courts. Furthermore, all of this bluster and bustle distracts us from the most salient point before us. Today. The court has ruled against the legislature's arguments in recent key cases multiple times. They have ruled unanimously against the very constitutional arguments that the legislature continues to utilize to prop up their power grab over their own voting maps. At this very moment, the legislature waits upon these two bills to forward or before the Supreme Court will see their appeal for one of those cases over their how to draw their own maps. Um, and for what, uh, when the legislature's own map maker admitted in court this summer to have broken the law in drawing map C when he utilized our voting data data to draw a more favorable map, why does the legislature seek to change the court, if not to increase its efficiency, to alter its rulings, which rulings are, they are currently being sought to overturn the ones that prohibit them from drawing maps in whatever manner they see fit those maps which they themselves use on election day. We see that our legislature, we see have, we have seen what our legislature has done when this process is governed by rules they skirt.

All right. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Again. My name is Tanner Latham. I'm an educator. I teach in history, government and criminal justice. And while I want to support this bill, there is a thorn among the roses. Um, like was said before, the three more judges for the district courts two to the court of appeals, the clerks, the judge assistance, all of that would be very beneficial and goes to the funding problem that the courts themselves say. The issue is, if we did that, I mean, there wouldn't even be a need for the previous bill that I spoke against. Uh, the thorn in the rosebush here is when it comes to the increasing number on the Supreme Court. Now, Representative Welton himself, uh, talked about how there's 270 cases filed last year, and on average our Supreme Court takes on between 50 to 70. Uh, each year the US Supreme Court has nine justices. They take, they get over 10,000 requests each year and only are able to take 80 to a hundred. It is not about quantity, it is about quality. And with having over doubled the amount of justices we do, they're not doing any more than, uh, we are here in Utah. Adding more justices to the Supreme Court would not increase. In fact, it would greatly or would not decrease. It would greatly increase the length of each case. Um, as was said by Senator Wilson, there is the question of court packing. It is, I think, insulting to citizens to say that we don't notice that this is reactionary to the issue of prop four that the previous person spoke on. And because they spoke on that, I won't continue on with that, but that is one of the major issues here. If we are to get this bill, I would ask that you first revise it to get rid of the increase to the Supreme Court.

Hi, I am Sierra Debenham. I'm a constituent from Millcreek. Um, I'm very new to politics. I've never been a political junkie. I'm a mom and on the weekends I'm an ER doctor. I Uintah BYU and the University of Utah. Um, uh, and, and, um, I just wanna give you my perspective. As a member of the public who doesn't know a lot about politics, I have no legal training. I don't understand half of what has been said today. Um, and the only reason I know what's going on is because I recently joined AM Weg. As a member, I'm representing myself. Um, the addition of two justices to the Supreme Court to me makes me really concerned that it's an attempt to fill the court with judges who will just enforce the laws that you guys want to pass. And, you know, I respect the work that you do, but it, I don't trust, um, that these judges will be impartial, that these judges will defend the will of the people. I have felt an erosion of that trust as I've been living in Millcreek. My city is so gerrymandered. I can call any representative and I have to give them my zip code, otherwise they don't know if they're representing me or not. Um, so that's my perspective, um, from the public. It makes me feel like I can't trust what the legislature is doing. It makes me feel like I can't trust the rulings from the Supreme Court if you expand it in this manner at this time. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. So I was just curious that you had mentioned that you think that we're going to have different judges appointed. In other words, they had different political leanings.

No, you know, we are in a Republican super majority state. I am a registered independent. Um, I'm concerned that the judges you pick will lean Republican. It would make sense, you know, with the super majority and that their rulings might not quite be impartial. I would think that we would probably select judges just like we've been selecting through the same method for using the same method as the same Senate that's approving and then the, it's the governor then that makes that recommendation.

Yes. So that's my question. I was just curious if we're not changing the process, I'm not sure how we're changing. We're selecting I understand what you're saying.

Uh, it might not even be fair now. I'm not really knowledgeable enough to say. Okay.

Thank you. I'm Seth Stewart. Um, I hear the concern that judges have too high a workload. I recently took a case to the United States Supreme Court because the Utah Supreme Court refused to hear it. I can only suppose they were too busy. It is a real shame that the Utah courts failed to examine my constitutional concerns because they address this very problem. I was told by a Utah District Court judge that she could not give me a jury trial because she was allegedly bound by precedent. Precedent does not equal constitutionality, and it has been demonstrated to be erroneous in very many instances. Federal courts have claimed that binding precedent is a natural consequence of the appellate structure required by the Constitution. But my petition exposes this error. I'm gonna read a little bit to you from it. If we were to enforce blindly the in interpretation of HU v Davis that the Court of appeals ignored the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution in Congress, then lower courts could not exercise discretion even in matters of constitutional right in violation of their oath of office. To sustain the Constitution, juries have power to nullify unjust laws. If you restore this power and eliminate the doctrine of binding precedent, you relieve substantial pressure on the appellate structure of the judiciary by allowing and affording more favorable resolutions earlier during the appeals process. I urge you to oppose this. Uh, the trial jury and the grand jury are the original Department of Government efficiency. And so with that, I I invite you to oppose this measure. Thank you.

Correct. Utah's constitution does not allow for any exceptions to the rule of jury trial in all criminal cases. There's no exception for infraction or any other designation.

Chairman, again, my name is Kristy Kimball. I'm a Salt Lake City resident and an attorney. Just a couple things that I wanted to point out that I don't think had been brought up here. There keep, there keeps being this rhetoric about, oh, this process is so nonpartisan. We pick, you know, great judge and we have to date, but the things that aren't being talked about that show that partisanship is coming into and influencing what's going on with the judges are other bills. Last, last year you introduced and you passed a bill that took away the nonpartisan requirement for the Judicial Performance and Evaluation Committee that had always been part of that. And that's the committee that, you know, puts together the evaluations of these judges and then it goes on the website and is public so that when people are voting for the judges, they have a good sense for whether or not these people are competent. And when that commission is, can now be partisan, we already know that that is going to start to impact the evaluations from that committee. So let's keep that in mind. That's highly concerning. Additionally, during this legislative session, you have introduced legislation to lower the percentage of the threshold that a judge has to reach to, to keep, keep an office. And so with these things, these two things combined, it's clearly with judges that you, that legislature may not like, where they can tweet out, you know, threats and say negative things and then have jpeg Okay. Saying negative Things. So that will affect No, hang on, hang on. Judges, we're you happen to be the first one, uh, that we already had to interrupt. Feel free and now we're here again. So you're an attorney. Okay. Apply, apply those standards. We don't imp impugn the character of others. We're don't invent. How Was I impugning character, My ideas? How was I impuning your character or anyone's, I was stating the facts. Please speak to the bill itself, not other bills. You need to state germane the, We have, we have to connect all the dots that are affecting have about how this works. If you brought all the legislation in one bill, then we can look at it all together. If we bring you 10 bills, we have to think about how they all impact. This Is not an argument. Okay. Or it Is. Thank you.

I'm not an attorney. Uh, instead I am an analyst. Uh, so when the conversation came around to, uh, how one could use the same process to create a, uh, more heavily biased, uh, uh, court, that is actually something to do with data analysts, uh, analysis. Um, so that has to, uh, that is called p hacking, uh, when you're taking a random sampling. Um, and in this case that would be, uh, judges being, uh, approved by the same method. Uh, the end results of those could change based on just random things. Nobody intends for anything. Uh, so what happens is you can change the, uh, end result based off of, oh, and I apologize. Um, if you look at a result, take a sample, look at the, uh, result of that sample, and then take a new sample. What has happened is that you can start guiding something towards a new, uh, conclusion even when it's not intentional. Uh, so there is a way to introduce bias to a data system by simply taking additional samples. Yeah. That is all. Thank you.

Hello, my name's Andrew Jacob. Um, I am a new resident to Utah and politics are new to me and I'm working on being, uh, an environmental advocate. And this bill worries me, um, because I would like to have a voice federally and we need to make sure that we're protecting our climate so that we can protect the Great Salt Lake. And currently we are in an environmental crisis here in Salt Lake City, um, and 20% of why the Great Salt Lake is draining is because of climate change. And I have not seen any federal, um, Utah representatives work on trying to fix this issue. And I'm worried that this bill, um, is going to try to stack the court to repeal prop four and take away my voter of representation so we can work on, work together on, uh, trying to save our environment here, which is also the foundation of our economy in Utah. Okay. Uh, so clarify, you're worried that you don't have representation now in Congress? Um, I said I'm a resident of Murray. I am still working on figuring out who all my representatives are. Um, okay. Yeah, I talked to them Recently. Yeah, you should, you should be covered.

Oh, to me. Okay. Yeah. Um, yeah. Thank you Mr. Chair. Committee members. Uh, my name is Samuel Adams. Hold. Yes. So, yeah. Okay. Sometimes people think that's, He paused there just to make sure we all got the effect. That was Well, I just, sometimes you wanna see my ID or make sure I'm not Elmer Fudd. Oh, I appreciate that. Actually, that happened more during COVID. Yeah. So, uh, I'm a strong believer in deliberative assemblies and that motivates my comments today. So in the boards and councils and conventions of ordinary life, uh, when a single motion contains separable proposals, one of which is uncontroversial, and another which is more contested, uh, the standard procedure encourages their division. Um, and this protects both the body, uh, from this protects the body from both confusion and from coercion. Um, and it ensures that no measure distracts from the others and all receive the attention they deserve. Uh, public trust requires that we change our institutions carefully and deliberately with due consideration of the contexts and of the merits. Uh, we elect representatives to a legislature in part because of the great value of this deliberative process, but this value can be compromised when weighty questions are bundled into up or down packages. And I believe that SB one 30 four's collection of court amendments currently creates a bit of a dilemma that impedes the consideration of each issue on its own merits. So I urge you to withhold support for SB 1 34 second substitute.

I I would yield to the bar if that were the case. My, my name's Spencer Brown. I'm, I'm an appellate attorney here in town For They control your, your ability to work. It's probably a good idea Sometimes. Yeah, they do. Unless I want to go just start a talk of stand or something like that. Yeah. Okay. Think about that. Um, I oppose the expansion of the Supreme Court, uh, for a couple of reasons. First of all, uh, there's really no indication that this is going to, uh, increase efficiency at the Supreme Court. Adding two more justices just adds complexity to cases. We know what Justice Durant thinks, we know what the court thinks. It's not gonna help efficiency at the Supreme Court level is more law clerks, it's more staff. It's, it's more help for the justices as they sit second. And the bigger concern is we've heard from ordinary citizens, uh, over and over again today about their trust in an expanded Supreme Court about the animosity between the legislature and the Supreme Court. That's been pretty public over the last couple years because of some pretty public cases. The concern is that if the legislature moves to expand the Supreme Court, whatever the motivation is, the public sees that as court packing. That's important for practitioners like me on a day-to-day basis, because I have to tell my clients that you can trust our judiciary. You can trust this judge and, and every day, whether it's a trial court judge, whether it's judges at the Court of Appeals, whether it's judges at the Supreme Court, and I have the absolute privilege of practicing in front of him and standing in front of him that they can trust him, that they are good and that they're right or wrong. They're doing their best. It breaks my heart to see that they can't sometimes. Thank you.

Thank you representatives. Tyler Young again, uh, for the record here from, uh, the Utah State Bar. The Utah State Bar supports the addition of district court judges and court of appeals judges, but opposes the increase, um, in the Supreme Court. Justices Chief Justice Durant in his state of the judiciary address to the legislature last week, said that there is no backlog at the Supreme Court. Prior delays were related to COVID. He also pointed out that any slowdown in the courts is related to the issues in the lower courts. The bar opposes the addition of Supreme Court judges because the bar believes those funds are better used elsewhere in the fourth district in Utah County. My district, over the past 20 years, the population has doubled, yet we have the same number of judges today is when I started practicing law 20 years ago. Uh, I understand many judges there have over a thousand cases, several judges. There have over 1300 cases. These are civil contract cases, uh, uh, injury cases, divorces and felony cases like the Robinson case involving the alleged murder of Charlie Kirk. These judges are absolutely overwhelmed. They, we are losing good judges, we're scaring away qualified judges because they don't want any part of the stress of these caseloads that they're faced with. Adding one judge in the fourth district is like offering an umbrella to somebody in a Hurricane. They need multiple judges. They need increased pay for court staff, uh, to keep cases moving and to assist with legal writing. This is true across many jurisdictions in the state. They, uh, dis we need help in the district courts, not new Supreme Court judges. Thank

Go ahead. Thank you Mr. Chair and good afternoon representatives. Stan Rasmussen with Sutherland Institute. Earlier today, we emailed to you our message in support of this bill and for the public record. We'll share a part of that statement from my colleague Sutherland Constitutional Law fellow William Duncan. The proposal to increase the number of judges on Utah's courts is an appropriate way of increasing judicial efficiency. The Utah Constitution gives the legislative branch the responsibility to make necessary changes to the way courts function. This proposal would help the courts functioning without interfering with their constitutional responsibilities. As has been presented, the state's population has increased such that the increase in judges and justices is necessary. And for these reasons, we encourage your support of the bill.

Gotcha. Thank you. Go ahead. Um, I like hearing the legislature's commitment to support the judiciary. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. I'm Corey Woodcock. There you go. And, uh, I'm, uh, I'm in, uh, Herriman, Utah. Um, uh, my house rep is, uh, um, Doug Fifi and, uh, Senator Fillmore. Um, I like hearing about the legislature's commitment to support the judiciary. And I like hearing, um, that we've used data and evidence to, um, decide which districts would receive new judges. I'm a little curious about what half a law clerk is. Um, that sounds a little bit impossible. Um, but, uh, I don't understand how adding more Supreme Court Justices, um, uh, helps with an 8,000 case backlog. And I don't, uh, understand why keeping up with the Joneses, um, other states around, um, is a good reason to expand the Supreme Court. Um, I've read the Judiciary Report, um, and there's plenty of really great ideas in there about how to help the judiciary do better, um, and reduce delays. Um, and it seems that the biggest ask is to spend more money, um, and this bill does that, but on the wrong things. Um, I found Senate Bill 57 by Todd Weiler. It does exactly the court expansion that the judiciary has asked for. Um, and I don't understand why we're entertaining this one at all. Um, I would love any expansion in the district courts, but not in the Supreme Court.

Half a law clerk is, is hopefully the top half. And you know, I I I'm not sure if they work 20 hours or if we're speak talking real and they work 80 instead of 160, but it's, it's meant to just to be part-time. So.

Kathy Campbell. Okay. Um, I'm Kathy Campbell. I'm a retired attorney. I live in Salt Lake City, which you can Google is known as the most gerrymandered city in the country. Um, I have, I attended virtually the Senate Committee earing on this bill here today. Um, I'd like to just kind of summarize something that I've noticed. Number one is, um, I believe the sponsor has stated that he's not an attorney. You have had a representative from the Utah Bar here, um, on this bill stating that, and, and just for anyone else who knows any practicing attorney has to be a member of the Utah Bar. The Utah Bar Association disagrees with the addition of two Supreme Court justices. Um, we had a very, in very intelligent, knowledgeable law professor who probably knows more about constitutional law than anyone in this room. Um, she also disagrees. Um, what we're seeing is rebuilds of my count that I have seen come before legislature that are definitely reactions to the Judge Gibson decision and with respect and honor, um, about talking about how you can be, um, neutral. We had members of the legislature calling for the removal of Judge Gibson because they did not like the decision. When you say that, you know, that the legislature can be impartial and there's a process for, um, installing judges. I think it's a little diff difficult for the public to believe that when we see legislatures who don't like a decision and wanna remove a judge, I know there's a bill, um, that's pending here, uh, to be able, the legislature can decide to remove a judge if they don't like the decisions. Um, these are all very obviously reactions to the Judge Gibson decision. And I will tell you right now, I do not have representation. Um, 48% of the people in this state are not registered Republicans and the fact that we have a super majority that's fighting one poten.

I'm here. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Go ahead. Okay. Um, I am, I live in North Logan. I also attended the previous hearing remotely. Um, I wanted to make an observation of what I've noticed through these hearings is that the vast, vast majority of the comments, um, and especially the expert comments from judges, former judge's attorneys, has been opposed to both this bill and, um, the constitutional court bill. And yet somehow, uh, these bills continue to get pushed through committees. I would hope that we could trust our legislators to listen to experts as we know that you are not all experts in all things and don't expect you to be that's why we have other, um, you know, citizen experts, and that's why you have public comment periods. So when I see these, um, fills with, uh, broad expert opposition continue to get pushed through, despite that opposition, and for good reason with good logic, it does concern me that we have legislators who are not listening to experts and who are not listening to constituents concerns, and instead are simply doing whatever they want whenever they want. And the voters of Utah are watching and would like to trust our elected officials. And I would like you to keep that in mind. I strongly oppose this bill. I believe it erodes public trust, but we've already talked about all the reasons why. So I won't go into that. But please trust experts that you have for public comment.

Owen, are you there? Uh, yes, Go ahead. All right. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Chairman, um, my name is Owen Johnston. I'm a constituent from American Fork. Uh, I'll be pretty straightforward. Uh, the proponents of this bill insist that it has nothing to do with packing the court in response to Prop four and the pending appeal that should shortly go before the Supreme Court. Um, if that's the case, there's an easy remedy, amend the bill so it, the Supreme Court increase doesn't go into effect until after the Prop four appeal has been heard by the Supreme Court and its current composition of five judges. Um, if, if delaying the implementation is not possible, I think it makes it pretty transparent that this is about the Prop four repeal and not about needing to increase the number of judges on the Supreme Court for efficiency reasons. Um, and that's all I have to say. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I'd like to pass out favorably SB 1 34, uh, second sub, uh, court amendments. And I'd like to speak to that. We have a motion to pass, uh, Senate bill 1 34 second substitute with a favorable recommendation. Um, would you like to speak to it? I would. And first I wanna say chair, thank you so much for providing so much public comment. Um, on this. We've, uh, it's been quite, uh, a great discussion and we've, we hear you, we've received emails and texts for, for both sides. Um, and so the reason why I wanted to place this motion is because I am the vice chair of Appropriations for Criminal Justice, which means for the last few years I've been listening to the requests from the courts of what they would like to have funded. So, um, that's, I wanna share just a couple of statistics. Um, because in the last, uh, five years, uh, the legislature has, um, added three total juvenile court judges. Um, and, but in 20 21, 22, and, uh, there were in 23, there was requests for judges and the legislature was not able to fund them. Um, in 24, there were four district, uh, judges, uh, requested. We funded one in 2025. There were seven district court, um, and one appeal requested. And we did not fund any last year. And I wanna explain that, and that is because, um, in our appropriations committee, when you talk about process, um, there has been a lot of conversation about the need for more judges at, at every level. This is not, what I'm hearing today is not today's conversation. It's, it's been a number of years in the making. Um, but what we did ask the legislature is to actually, uh, to help the Supreme Court to really give us an evaluation of their efficiency, of how they use their funds, where it could be best spent. And I'm really, uh, proud of our, our courts. Ron Gordon came from the courts and presented to the appropriation committee that they did the government government excellence, um, audit, um, that is on our audit legislative auditor's website. And in that they identified where funds could be used more appropriately, even for retaining more of their staff. Um, we also had a great work group with, uh, law schools and Salt Lake Community College and with other, uh, to really help with the workforce development. And so, um, this year they did, uh, request and are requesting seven district courts and one appeal. Um, and so I, right now though, uh, we are still short even with that request, um, they are still, let's see, they are still short. They, uh, one juvenile court judge, 12 district court judges and one court of appeals. So I think the process that our appropriation committee has really been thorough to say, show us and let's work together to see how we can use taxpayer dollars, the, the most effectively. And we want to fund more court, uh, uh, judges. So I, I wanna say the fact that this legislation is prioritized really by, by the legislature to bring two new appellate court justices and three district court justices from three different districts across our state. Um, I am really supportive of that because this is a few years in the making to be able to evaluate, uh, legislative funding and where it can be best spent. And so I'm in favor of this and, and just wanted to share that process because we do have a a a a, a thorough, um, process in policy, but especially in appropriations. And, and this definitely has to be, has to come to our appropriations committee. And so I also want to mention Chief Justice Durant because he did request that if there were two more Supreme Court justices, um, added that it would not be at the mercy of, of building up the, the lower courts. And so I, I, um, am very supportive of this legislation, be bringing more, uh, district courts and appellate court justices, and we also have juvenile justices that we're working on also funding. So with that, um, I, I think that was appropriate for me to share the process that we have in the legislature and, uh, and to support funding for additional judges in, in the state of Utah.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to mention, I've heard from numerous people on both sides of this issue. And so I've listened quite intently and I've done some of my own research as well. I wanna just, I'm from Utah County, represent Provo Orem areas. I wanted to just bring up Utah County Commission. So we have a three member commission, and I continuously hear how Utah County is growing and people wanna go to five. Utah County has increased 140,000 people since 2020. That's incredibly growth. The Supreme Court has not been expanded since 1917. We have five judges. In 1917, we had 400,000 for population in 2026, we have 13 million and a half population in total State. Supreme Courts across the county have changed their Supreme Court's numbers 152 times. So I'm looking at our population, I'm looking at the types of crime, I'm looking at the type of cases that we have and the cases that we need to take to our Supreme Court, and I want to support them. And I'm grateful we're actually getting those down in the district courts too. 'cause I know down in my area we definitely need one. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I, I'll, I'll be brief. I do, I do want to, uh, clarify and correct a statement that was by the representative from the Bar Association. Our Chief Justice did not say no backlog. He said essentially no backlog, not quite sure what essentially mean, but essentially is not no backlog. So I just wanted to clarify that. I also wanted to talk to about, in the Senate, it was a judiciary committee and it came out of there with an eight to one, uh, vote. It was, uh, bipartisan support and four attorneys, uh, voted in favor of this bill. So, um, I think it was vetted very well and, and had their support. Just in conclusion, again, I want to, uh, reiterate what Chief Justice Durant talked about the process that he has great confidence. He thanked us for the, for us adopting and imple, implementing a selection process that has built an honorable and conscientious judiciary in which citizens can have confidence. I have confidence in that process that we can again, uh, choose two more Supreme Court justices to more, uh, justices on the Court of appeals and three more district court judges. And with that, I'll conclude my presentation. Thank you.

Um, the Judiciary and Criminal Justice Committee. It's Judiciary, law Enforcement and Criminal Justice in the Senate. We combine the two committees. Yes. Good point. We work on the same things Yeah. All the time. Yeah.

Yes, I would. And and that's actually the name of our, uh, of what we oversee in the appropriation committee. It's the, uh, appropriation for criminal justice, which includes the courts, law enforcement, and public safety. So, um, with that, I, I think this is really important for us to fund, um, our judges. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, just a little bit of history. Uh, when the, when the Utah became a state in 1896, there was roughly 276,000 people, and we at that time had three Supreme Court justices. It was, uh, roughly 20 something years later in 1917 when the population of the state of Utah, uh, ballooned, I guess, to 444, roughly just under 500,000 people. Uh, they saw a need to increase the Supreme Court to five. Uh, in 1987 when the current court of appeals was created, uh, there was 1.7 million people. And at that appellate court had seven justices, President, um, I'd like to read this morning, we all received a Utah Judiciary annual report. And if I can just read, Go ahead. That's a good idea. Uh, this is, this is from, uh, their annual report. And they say the appellate courts experienced records setting caseload growth in physical year 2025 and physical year 2024, and two of the three highest filing years in the past decade and physical year, 2025 recorded the highest number of appellate filings in the history of both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. This sustained increase in filings reflects growing demand for a appellate review and increasing pressure on existing judicial resources. Mr. President, this bill is in a, uh, I think a very, very, uh, positive direction in allowing and providing system-wide resources. This bill will add two Supreme Court justices, along with four law clerks to the Supreme Court. It also will, uh, provide two, uh, justices for the Court of Appeals, along with four, uh, clerks, law clerks, which are basically attorneys to help, uh, uh, research cases to help with opinions. It also includes, uh, staff and also includes, uh, changing the construction of the current Supreme Court to allow to seven. There has been a lot of talk it, obviously with their judicial review about the increased caseload and also the increase of the complexity of the, of the cases that we've seen. As they mentioned, as far as the Supreme Court filings, last year in 2025, the Supreme Court had 270 filings. During that year, the Court of Appeals had 1,143 filings, and that's up 7% from the, from the previous year. Out of the 58, they had 58, uh, decisions in 2 20, 25. Of those 58 decisions, 52 were unanimous, and only six of those had a descending opinion. Currently, the 10 closest states in population to the state of Utah has either seven, seven to or nine justices. Currently, 35 states have either seven or nine justices, and only 15 states have five justices. And currently, like I mentioned, Utah roughly has 3.6 million. And the 10 closest states I'll have between seven and nine justices. And I, I've appreciated, uh, governor Cox, and if I may quote him on, on his support, uh, for help with the judiciary, let me just quote what he said in a, in a podcast. He said, most states are, are bigger, have gone to seven or nine. I think this makes sense. And here's Governor Cox said, when I was interviewing justices for the Supreme Court, almost every one of them said they were worried about the wait times for decisions coming out and felt that we needed more support, both at the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. And if I looked at the date data from 1987 when we increased the Court of Appeals, or actually created the Court of Appeals, at that time, we had 66 judges at that time. We had district court judges and circuit court judges for 66 judges. Currently we have 78 district court judges. We have 70 justice court judges, 11 commissioners, 33 juvenile court judges, and 12 district judges. Yesterday in committee, uh, we substituted an amended and, uh, we added to this bill and it's, it's in the first substitute. We added three district court judges to districts three, which is Salt Lake County Districts four, which is Utah County and District Five, which is Washington County. Uh, the highest needs that the judiciary has recognized. And I appreciate the good work from many of the Senator Vickers, uh, that came with concerns to make sure that we are taking care of the caseload and the district levels. Um, so I appreciate that. Uh, I'm, I'm not sure on the physical note of that, but it will include staff along with those three district court judges. So, mi, Mr. President, I think that the need is, is, is obvious. Um, and I appreciate the governors, uh, Cox a few months ago leading out on this. This is something that we've been discussing here in the Senate. I know there's been a number of Senator Ipson that have talked about this. I've had a number of attorneys come to me and tell me that, uh, this is way overdue. And I do, um, think now is the time, uh, to expand it. And if I can, Mr. President, I'd like to, um, if I can find it in my, I've got too many notes. This is what, um, our Good Chief Justice Durant said in his remarks the other night. He said, thank you for your role in adopting and implementing a selection process that has built an honorable and conscientious judiciary in which citizens can have confidence. And I believe, like he is, he has confidence. I have confidence that we can, through the selection process, find two more appellate court judges and also two more Supreme Court justices that will serve, serve with honorably and with conscientious. So without Mr. President, uh, that should conclude my presentation.

Thank you, Mr. President. Will the sponsor yield to questions? Senator Wilson, will you yield? Yes, go ahead, Senator Evie. Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, I have been contacted by many constituents about this bill. Uh, they recognize the need for the appellate courts to have more staff and more support, and I am very supportive of that. They have indicated to me that they are concerned about the Supreme Court being, um, extended. So, um, I'm a little torn between how we are going to fund this in such a lean year. And if we are, um, if we could prioritize funding the appellate court over the Supreme Court justices, my constituents would be, uh, more amicable to that. Is that something that we can make sure we're pri prioritizing the lower lower courts over the Supreme Court?

Uh, thank you, Mr. President. I think it's obvious using the judiciaries, um, their own words when they say with the expansion and needed in both the Appellate Court and the Supreme Court, I believe this bill will give system system-wide resources. And I think that's exactly what they need.

Thank you. Um, like I said, my, my constituents are very concerned with, um, and this is from their words, from packing the Supreme Court with what the 10, with the tension we've had lately. So I'm, I'm struggling with how, uh, I can meet both those needs with my constituents. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise in support of the, of the bill. Um, uh, as I think, um, Senator Wilson described, um, the bill was amended by Senator Brammer and myself yesterday to add three district court judges. And those are in the three most desperately needed areas in the state, um, which I think is very important, um, to the good senator from Salt Lake's Point. Um, adding two Supreme Court judges is, uh, a fiscal note of about $1 million. And if you factor that into our $30 billion budget, that would be 0.0033% of our budget. Um, I think we can afford that. And a comment I made yesterday was, I understand the timing, um, is, um, suspect to some people. Um, I, I called for this three years ago, and that was reported in the media. I tweeted out a link to that yesterday for anybody that thinks I'm making that up. This is something that I have been contemplating for a while, I've been discussing publicly. And, um, the, the comment I made yesterday, which I'd like to repeat 20 years from now, I don't think anyone's gonna say a mistake. It was a mistake to expand our Supreme Court to seven Justices because 20 years from now, we're likely gonna be a state of five, if not 6 million people. And I think, uh, I think now this is a good a time as any, so I, I'll be voting. Aye, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President with the sponsor yield to some Questions. He's already agreed to yield. Go ahead. Thank You. I'm curious, uh, if you could help me understand the changes in the sub that was just adopted with regards to the timing of, uh, the nominations. I'm still a little confused by

Go ahead. Yeah, just if I, I'm looking for more information about the, the substitute that we just adopted. I'm still a little confused by, um, the provisions regarding a recruitment period.

I do. Mr. President, Go ahead. Go ahead. Thank You. Uh, yeah, this, and here again, I was approached by, uh, cabinet members in the governor's office and also CCJJ. They, they wanted to be able to have a code that they would be able to, um, fulfill the Supreme Court justices before turning to the appellate court. They thought that was a better, uh, process. And, uh, so this is their language that they came up with that allows them to, to fill the Supreme Court justices first, especially as we know that they may come from the appellate court, uh, and then, uh, they can, uh, move to the appellate court. They also mentioned that this is probably the only time in history that this could happen, but it may happen on rare occasions where you'd have a vacancy in, in both courts at the same time. But this substitute would, would allow them to do the Supreme Court, uh, selection process. First.

Uh, uh, no, Mr. President, but if I could speak, uh, to my opposition to the bill, um, we had what I thought was a very valuable committee hearing, and I commend the, the chair of that committee for allowing a robust comment to be heard. I thought it was very respectful and informative. Um, but really the takeaway from the committee, from, from the stakeholders and attorneys that practice in this space, as well as individuals that are familiar with the way that the Supreme Court operates, is that this really isn't needed. And we know from the, from the judiciary's own funding requests that they're not asking for this, that there is a bottleneck in the lower courts, and that there are resources that are desperately needed to help, uh, address the increase of caseload, as well as some backlog of cases of cases in the district courts. In looking at some data from, uh, the courts, it looks like every district, uh, every every judicial district except one, uh, is overworked. The, the workload burden is, uh, above what can be managed. And I appreciate the subs that were passed yesterday in committee, which create, I believe, three new judicial positions at the district court level. But we need eight. And until we address, uh, the critical needs from the courts, it's really hard to justify the funding that will be going to, uh, that will be committed to these two new positions. Um, and so I I, I oppose it on those grounds. Um, I, I raised this example in committee as well, but we have our own caseload issues here in the legislature. We're filing more bills than we ever have before. And I don't think that any of us would feel that adding additional legislators, uh, to our, to our body would solve that issue. There are things that we could do to manage the workload, and I think the same is true for the judiciary. So I'll be opposing the bill and encourage my colleagues to do the same.

Thank you. Thank you. I just wanna call attention to the, uh, immediate effective date. And I know that is something we see frequently, um, but I believe the sponsors agreed to yield. I, I'm just wondering, was there any discussion about phasing this in and not doing it immediately in order to avoid some of those optics that I think were a big part of the conversation, uh, during the committee debate yesterday? Is that a question to senator? Yeah, so the question essentially is, is

Yeah. The, the question essentially is, is, was there conversations about, uh, implementing this in the future instead of doing it basically in an immediate effective date that is described in the bill

Senator Wilson, uh, Mr. President. I don't remember a discussion about the implications of the dates, but this is just what we had decided on with, with a number of stakeholders.

Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, you know, oftentimes when we're up here, you know, we get asked to vote on particular pieces of legislation, and you, you know, a lot of, uh, sometimes it's, uh, you know, the policy itself, sometimes it's, you know, there's, uh, political, political ramifications all over the things, why we make decisions. Sometimes it's even emotional and thought process. Um, this is a little different for me. I have, you know, I've looked at, uh, what, uh, the good Senator Vickers trying to do and, you know, adding judges within our system. And I'm not sure that I have a any complaint about that. Uh, but here's the one thing that I have struggled with, and it's just one component of it. And that is adding additional Supreme Court justices. It was a few years ago when that there was a lot of talk on a federal level of adding num judges to the Supreme Court. And that was primarily, uh, you know, from one party, the controlling party at the time. Um, and there's a lot of people including me, that thought that was the wrong thing to do. And I am sitting here fast forward now and thinking, well, am I being consistent if I vote in favor or what's, what's my thought process? My thought process is I'm still struggling because I really opposed that at that time. And now just because maybe, uh, we are in charge, my side's in charge, it's okay. And I'm, I'm struggling with that a little bit. So my, I don't really have a question for the senator. I don't, I feel like I understand what he is trying to do. Uh, I just want you to know, as an individual legislator, I'm trying to, I'm struggling with how do I be consistent with my thought process and, and as I've dealt with these issues over the years. So, thanks.

Thank you, Mr. President. I just would like to address, uh, the question that I've been hearing, uh, in this room and a couple of other places about, uh, well, why should we do this? The, the justices didn't request this, and I, and I would like to share my thoughts on that. So, history teaches us that institutions almost never volunteer to limit or share their own power, unless legitimate legitimacy, public trust, or long-term stability at stake. The most enduring systems of government are not those that clinging to power, but those that are willing to distribute it to function better. Expanding the Utah Supreme Court from five to seven justices, follows that tradition. This proposal is not about weakening the court, it's about strengthening it by improving deliberation, reducing bottlenecks, and ensuring that the court reflects the growing complexity and population of our state. Throughout history, durable institutions have chosen restraint and balance over concentration from the framers, dividing powers across branches to courts nationwide expanding benches as caseloads increased. The lesson is clear. Sharing authority is how institutions preserve credibility, not lose it. A seven. Justice Court provides broader perspective, greater stability and precedent, and fewer tie decisions, outcomes that serve litigants, lower courts, and the public alike. This is a forward-looking structural adjustment, grounded in humility, not politics. Ultimately, this is about public confidence because courts derive their authority not from force, but from trust and expanding. The court honors that principle by ensuring that our highest court remains deliberative, resilient, and worthy of the respect that it commands. History shows that these durable systems distribute the authority when complexity grows. And a seven justice court brings more perspective, fewer deadlocks, stronger decisions, and in short power concedes only when it must. Thank you, Senator Baldry.

Thank, thank you, Mr. President. And, uh, I want to echo the words of the good, uh, Senator from Salt Lake. Uh, this was a good committee hearing and Senator Weiler did a great job managing the committee, hearing and, and allowing the public to speak. Uh, during the committee hearing, I actually had a, a, a friend of mine who is, is an attorney and a judge who, who text me. He was following along. He says, you know, Senator Weiler did a really good job. And, and, and he did. Um, I, I listened to all of the testimony and, um, as far as expanding the Supreme Court, that was the only issue that came forward. And I was elected as a policymaker. I'm an attorney in the real world, but as a policymaker, I had to look at the policy. And I, I'll tell you what was absent from the committee, hearing a lot of my colleagues from the bar, um, I, I am an attorney. Um, I, I didn't hear policy arguments against expanding from five to seven. Senator Wilson brought a lot of data states that are the same size as Utah. And in nearly every case without exception, those states had gone from five to seven in the past, or were at, or seven to nine. And, and I thought with all the attorneys that came and testified against the bill, I would hear a policy argument against expanding. And, and I didn't, the closest thing I heard to a policy argument is a law professor said that in sociology, sometimes we make better decisions with five people. And that was the closest thing I saw. And, and it wasn't persuasive to me because nearly every state size of Utah uses seven. And, uh, I, I, I looked up our, our, our code, and I looked at what we do with juries. If it's a capital case, we have eight jurors. If it's a first degree felony case, we, we have, I I I, I stated that wrong with capital case. We have 12 jurors with a felony case. We have eight jurors with a class A misdemeanor. We have six jurors. And the more significant the penalty, the more people we, we add. And we already recognize that in the code today. And I, I appreciate all of the good work. And as a policymaker reviewing the policy, I, I am persuaded that going from five to seven is the right policy. And with that i'd, I'd urge the body to support the bill. Thank you. Now,

Senator Musselman, I wanna rise today to somewhat explain where I'll be voting on this and to also, uh, reiterate some of my concerns. Um, I'll say at the outset, I will be voting in favor, although I've been going back and forth and back and forth, and the good president's heard my concerns. Um, but I, I, I think some of what I'm going to say is just gonna be echoing of what some of my seatmates have already said. But I, I, I think they're worth reiterating and reaffirming. Um, there's no question that the timing of this, uh, proposal raises concerns. No question. The recent, some of the recent, uh, events have, have put us in a circumstance where, where we're, uh, we have to recognize that we're not, we don't look at policy purely in a vacuum, and things are occurring outside that, that, uh, have implications, uh, to this bill. And we can't ignore it. And we can't, we can't just pretend that only the policy matters in this circumstance. 'cause it matters what the public, what the public thinks. Um, I also wanna recognize something else. There's never, as was said, a perfect time for expanding the court. If you were to ask the court today, they, they have, they're not asking for this. If you were to ask 'em 20 years ago, uh, if they were to expand, they would probably say, now, if they asked 20 years from now, they would say the same thing. And I'm not that, I don't say that in judgment, that's just the nature as was already stated. That's just human nature and, and maybe some institutional nature. Um, but that being said, whose responsibility is it then? And with any kind of, even a, a a little bit of research, you can recognize that most of the times this comes from legislative pressure to expand the court. And, and there can be all sorts of demographic data that adds to that decision. Um, as to whether or not it's the appropriate time or not. There never will be a perfect time. There will always be reasons to say, no, we shouldn't always no matter what, even though this particular time is tough to do this. That being said, I want to finish one of, one of the thought. 'cause I had presented an idea. I'm just gonna present it again, even though I recognize there's some holes in it. Um, Nevada has a model, a model that I like. Um, and I still like it, even though I got some pushback in, in committee, in presenting this idea. And that's a bifurcation where there's two panels, three judges set on one side, three judges set on the other. And then you have the Chief Justice oversees most cases where some, the, the extreme cases or the, or the constitutional cases. Otherwise, they're seen in bonk with the, with the Supreme Court together. And I, we had one judge, uh, uh, maybe I'm going on too long, but we had one judge that stood up and expressed his concerns about it. But his concern was, and I'm, I'm not beating you up 'cause it, I think it's a, it's a fair concern. He knew somebody that he had talked to, but that was the only data that he provided. I know somebody and I talked to me, somebody and trust me, Senator Musselman, this is a bad idea. I think it's worth considering, at least as we go forward, that is a potential something we could look at. I'll, I'll be voting in favor. Sounds like a bill for next year. Thanks, Mr. President. I'll be voting in favor, but I do so with a great deal of Hessing concern and recognize that we're going to have some, some concerns from the public going forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. And, and piggybacking almost a little bit off of, uh, where Senator Musselman left that I, I think that the concerns from the public are something I'd like us to try to work around and work through and, and try to figure out how we can message better. Because we, we have a bit of an optics problem right now, and there are folks who are confused about what seems like the hypocrisy of us saying smaller boards, smaller sentencing, smaller school, where we say that on some issues or most issues, and then charge forward with making something else bigger that feels hard for the public to digest. I think personally, uh, from what I hear from the professionals in the field, including many of those who came up to speak yesterday, there is a need to build from the bottom up. And I can ultimately get behind something that I feel like it shows that the structure is there and that the funding is there from the bottom up. If we can get there in a, in a way that I feel like I can defend. But I really think we have to work on making that clear to the public because there is, there is a concern that this is far more political than it is, um, actual related to reality. So let's work on that. If, if I can ask that of my colleagues. Thank you, Mr. President.

Uh, thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. I, I just wanna ex uh, start by explaining, um, the process on this bill because we had a really good committee hearing, but starting with, um, the sponsor has been very gracious to be open, and I've been bothering him a lot in terms of this infrastructure piece that has, I think is being addressed through the bill with the substitutes in the amendments. It's addressing the biggest need. Immediate need. I wanna see more. But I, I recognize, um, the art of compromising is hard. And I, I took a vote yesterday and, you know, I'm, I'm hearing from my constituents, and this is, we all engage in that process. I, uh, but also it's a beautiful process because we have a committee, we have a second reading, there's gonna be a third reading, and that's, that's healthy. That's good. I've had a chance to come back to the sponsor. And I'll tell you my, my biggest concerns. There's concerns on, um, the, the principle and policy within the bill. There's a practical pieces that we are addressing. The bill is addressing a lot of those in every piece of the, um, with the amendments related to district courts. Three of those district courts and then the appellate courts and their staffing, which I think people need to understand. It is not only a judge, it is everything that surrounds, sat and I that was explained very well during committee. That's an important piece. Um, the other part that concerns is what's coming from the house. I've, you know, we're two separate chambers, but we have two, obviously at the end of, of the day through this process. And a lot of the public feels threatened by a lot of the bills that we don't even know if they're gonna even make it here. But we are passing, you know, all this other stuff. So we don't, we don't live in this vacuum is, there's more that's happening. So I, I'll say this as I am gonna be engaging this weekend with multiple groups that are, um, you know, um, concerned about my vote. I explained to them that there's a second reading and then a third reading. So I'll be a known too. But I have to admit, for me, getting to the compromise we need of getting the resources that are needed in our courts, and my constituents are waiting years to get into some of this, you know, to get the services they need. It's on, on us because we fund them. So I, we are accountable. So I, the more resources we can get, I am gonna see, you're gonna see me moving and pushing to get the resources we need, but I also recognize we need to work together and compromise. So with all that respect to the sponsor, I'll be a no on too. But I'm open to making sure that if we can get, get us to a place where those resources are in place. And it's been very transparent, um, with me and I think in to the public on what he's working on. Uh, you know, this is why I wanted to make sure to get a chance to explain this is part of the process. And we're all here for that process. And, and thank you Mr. President for allowing me to explain that.

Uh, thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate, uh, the, uh, all the input. If, if I may, Mr. President, in my summation, I'd like to, uh, direct some comments, uh, to my good, good colleague from Cedar City on the situation with the Federal Supreme Court. It's my understanding at that time with they've had nine justices, and I believe there were some people concerned. They felt like there were six, uh, conservative judges and three less conservative judges. And at that time, I remember it was that they were, uh, looking at adding at least four, uh, Supreme Court justices on a, in a clear attempt to overcome the conservative majority. So that was a completely different situation. If I may, again, Mr. President, talk about our, our, our Chief Justice Durant, again, his confidence in the same process we've had with our current, uh, chief, uh, justices on Supreme Court when he talks about it, that we've implemented a selection process that has built an honorable and conscientious judiciary in which citizens can have confidence. And I believe that in that same confidence, that the same, uh, process, uh, for the selection of the Supreme Court justices and the appellate court justices is ones that we've been following in the past. Uh, and again, if I can, and, and finally talk again and, and, uh, quote from the Utah Judicial Annual report we just got this morning as they talk about the caseload growth record caseload growth, these are talking about appellate court. So this is both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. They're both in the category of appellate courts. In other words, they are, they are, they receive their cases from the district court as people appeal it to the Court of Appeals, and then on to Supreme Court is usually the process. But 20 24, 20 25 or two of the three highest filing years in the past decade, 2025 recorded the highest number of appellate filings in the history of both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. This sustained increase in filings reflects growing demand for appellate review and increasing pressure on existing judicial resources without Mr. President, I, I was gonna do a call to the Senate,

Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, a motion that second substitute Senate bill 1 34. Be read a third time. Thank you. And the question is, shall second substitute Senate Bill 1 34?

Be read a third time roll call vote. Senator Vickers Baldry Lein Brammer bus cu colmore Aye. Escamia Fillmore. Aye. Grover. So should I tell Grover? Aye. Harper, I Kins. I ipson Ipsen Aye. Johnson Aye. Wan McKay? Aye. Mikel Aye. Milner? Aye. Musselman Owens Aye. Pitcher? Lum Rebe. No. Sandal. Aye. Stevenson? Aye. Stratton. Aye. Vicar, Weiler. Aye. Wilson. Aye. Winterton President Adams Aye. Second substitute Senate Bill 1 34. Having received 22 yay votes. Seven A votes zero being absent. Shall be read a third time.

Thank you Mr. President. Appreciate that. Uh, we had, uh, some robust discussion on Friday. I hope everybody had a great weekend. Uh, I'm sure many of you probably received communications about this bill. I'd just like to go over some of the stat, uh, this data and the, uh, I guess I could, uh, call it evidence, uh, why this bill is a, a proper, uh, way of us bringing resources, uh, system-wide, uh, to the Juab, uh, to the judiciary. Uh, again, if I re again mentioned that in 1896 during state hood, we had three Supreme Court Justices with 276,000 people. In 1917, we added two more for five, we had 444,000 people. It's been 108 years, and a little over 3 million people have been added to the state. The Appellate court, or the Court of Appeals was created in 1987 with 1.7 million people. Of course, we've, we've doubled that to 3.5 million. The average size of the appellate courts across the country is 12 judges, and we currently have seven. The 10 closest states to population to Utah all have between seven and nine justices. Of course, we know Article eight, section two of the Constitution allows the legislature to decide, uh, that, uh, with controls, the Juab, the judiciary on their budgets, on, on judges. Uh, and again, I think this bill, Mr. President, I appreciated the help that we received in the committee, uh, from a couple of very, uh, uh, uh, the good Senator from Bountiful and the good Senator from Utah County. We substituted the bill and added, uh, two district court judges. Then we amended that, um, to add a third district court judge. Those were the three districts that the judiciary, uh, said needed the most help, which was districts three in Salt Lake County, district four, which is Utah County and District Five, which is Washington County. We, we were listening to the judiciary and trying to, again, look for systemwide, uh, help with, with the judiciary. We talk about, and if I may, Mr. President on Friday, we all received a judicial, the, it's called the Utah Judiciary Annual Report. And in that report, I I may quote, it says, the appellate courts experienced record setting caseload growth in fiscal year 2025 in fiscal year 2024 and 2025 were two of the three highest filing years in the past decade. Fiscal year 2025 recorded the highest number of appellate filings in the history of both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. This sustained increase in filings reflects growing demand for appellate review and increasing pressure on existing judicial re resources. Mr. President, I know there's been some, I guess some chatter about this is packing the court. May I remind everybody that the same process we've had previously of the governor appointing and the Senate confirming is the same as it was previously? I may I also quote the Chief Justice Durant, when he, uh, presented to the legislature his words. He says, you saw the success of the Utah Merit Base model firsthand with your recent confirmation of Justice John Nielsen. And throughout the year when you many outstanding trial court judges, thank you for your role in adopting and implementing a selection process that has built an honorable and conscientious judiciary in which citizens can have confidence. Mr. President, I have confidence in that process. It's the same process we've had. I think now is the time to show the judiciary that we, we do care. We are going to deliver system-wide resources from, from what I can gather currently, we're gonna add around 16 people, seven judges and eight law clerks. Four, both through the Supreme Court and four to the Court of Appeals, plus a Juab judicial assistant, plus additional staff. And I, like I said, Mr. President, feel that this is a, a a time. I know we've been looking at this for a number of years. I know the good senator from Bountiful, uh, has mentioned he looked at it three and a half years ago. I knew, I know Representative Jefferson Moss had a bill last session to look to expand the Supreme Court. And for whatever reason, he decided to wait a year. And after our governor through, uh, his support be signed, the expansion a few months ago, I started looking into it. And with this data and the evidence, I think it's a, uh, an appropriate time for us to give the resources to the judiciary that that's been, that's been necessary. And without Mr. President, I will conclude my presentation. Thank, thank You for your presentation.

Mr. Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, I'm, I'm supportive of this action, but I want to explain a couple of thoughts that I've had over the weekend. One is, uh, colleagues, Mr. President. There are two components to what we're doing here, uh, at least in some people's eyes. One is a process. And the process is that our state is growing and because we're growing, we need more judiciary. Um, the counterpart of that, I guess, is that there is some politics that has been shown in, in this nationwide and, and in the states as well, that when a certain philosophy doesn't get the way they want, somebody wants it in the legislative branch, we tend to challenge it in the court system. And in that way, we want the courts to weigh in, in a partisan way, um, on a policy take. This is something that we need across the state. On a political side, I would suggest that all sides take a step back and look and say, we need to do our best to make sure that the judiciary is not the person that's making the laws, that the judiciary is just checking us against the Constitution. And if you look at it that way, I think it's a very clear, concise vote that the policy is correct. The politics is something I think we need to work on outside of this particular bill file. Thank you, Mr. President.

Senator Stevenson, you very, thank you very much, Mr. President. I rise in support of this bill and support of, uh, what's going on with our Juab judiciary. As I meet, uh, on an annual basis and semi-annual with the, all of the members of the, uh, various agencies and the various, uh, portions of government that we, we have to fund, I find that, uh, you know, I constantly meet with the judiciary, and we do have responsibility to them, uh, in spite of discrepancies that we have. We have discrepancies with the governor's office at times, but our, our responsibility is to make sure these organizations are funded so that they can support the citizens of this great state. And I think that we're doing that, and this is a, this is a, a, it's expansion of the court that we're doing is needed. It's not needed for us. It's not needed for, uh, to create bad policy. It's not needed to create problems with the judiciary. It's, it's, it, these things are raised because we need to take care of the citizens of this great state. And, uh, this bill certainly does that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President. You know, I've received a lot of, uh, emails over the weekend and, and what's been said I concur with, and I support it. I just think that in a lean year, uh, we're asking everybody to cut back, and then we're gonna add seven more judges and their staff to it. And, and I just question whether or not, what is plan B if we can't afford 'em all, where do we start? I know that we need 'em in the lower courts and, and listen to the Supreme, uh, justice, uh, grant. He, he said, you know, that's where the bottleneck is. And so I, my question is to the sponsor, is this all we have or is there a chance or opportunity to maybe look at phasing this in? I know we keep kicking the can down the road on this issue, but, uh, in a very lean year. Is this the time

Yes. Thank you. I I appreciate that question. Uh, Mr. President, uh, as we know, the, the cases from the district court that are appealed go to the Court of Appeals. Last year, the Court of Appeals had 1,143 filings. And of course, the Court of Appeals then funnels up to the Supreme Court. Last year, the Supreme Court had 270 filings, and they had 58 rulings. It's obviously, in my opinion, as these cases increase at the district level, they move up to the Court of appeals and some move up to the Supreme Court. I think it's important that our citizens, uh, that we are able to get to their cases in as, as fast a manner. There's nothing more, more, I think, stressful for people than to have a, a court, uh, case weighing on them as they live and go through life, knowing that, uh, as it goes on and on it, it just adds more stress, uh, to their lives. And I, I think we owe it to our citizens. It is a lean year. Um, we understand that. But I think in looking at these case filings and looking the record number, I think we owe it to our citizens that this should be a high priority, uh, going forward.

Second, it does. Senator Riebe.

Thank you. Mr. President, uh,

Thank you. Um, I have received a lot of emails about this bill over the weekend as well. And, um, my constituency really supports what the Supreme Court has done, and they have been the, um, the branch of the government that they feel is really holding back some of the more, um, unconstitutional things going forward. And so we have Utah fits all. We have Prop four, and we also had a Planned Parenthood ruling that went in contrary to some of the bills that came out of here. So when I think about my constituency and that the legislature has the ability to do this, and that we should be doing this, we should also be doing it in conjunction with our constituents and what they're asking us to do. So my understanding is that the Supreme Court is listening to these cases in a timely fashion, and I believe the Supreme Court has the ability to send things that are, um, not as weighty down back to the lower courts. So, um, I was wondering if you would support all of the Judiciary's funding requests, because this is what we are all most concerned about, is our lower costs courts and their judiciary costs. So, um, would you support funding all of those judiciary requests as well as, um, I, I, I don't believe that we should be adding to Supreme Court Justices,

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate the question. Um, I, I, I think we are supporting with, again, system-wide resources. As, as I look here, Mr. President, the Utah Supreme Court over the last decade has averaged 61 rulings a year. Over the last 20 years. They've averaged 72 rulings. There's no question that the Supreme Court, Supreme Court needs resources to get those numbers. They were 58 last year. Previously they were 72 average over 20 years. And that's 14 cases that, that, in my opinion, these extra resources will help in deciding with decisions. These extra law clerks will help with, um, uh, you know, precedents. They'll do research not only in the appellate court, but also the Supreme Court. And as these cases continue to increase, they're gonna move up in the funnel, and we're gonna have more and more challenges in our appellate and Supreme Court. So I believe these are, these are, uh, really a commitment from the legislature to the judiciary, and providing these resources that I think will help our citizens.

Yes, thank you, Mr. President. So in those 61 cases that you just mentioned, do, is there anything that says that they weren't heard in a timely fashion? Because I think our Supreme Court justices are doing what they need to be doing, and they're doing it as, as diligently as possible. I think it's the lower courts that we actually need to start spending our resources on. So is there anything that indicates that they weren't hearing their courts in a timely fashion?

Senator Wilson? Uh, I'm, I'm not an attorney, uh, Mr. President, looking at the overall volume, I believe they do need help. Uh, looking at some cases, I've been told from my attorney friends, there are some cases that have been, uh, for three, three and a half years waiting to be heard. Uh, I think it's obvious in my opinion that the Utah Supreme Court needs additional resources.

Thank you, Mr. President. I did wanna chime in and add, um, some perspective regarding the data that my colleague has shared. Um, not everything that is not, not all filings have to go to the Supreme Court. In fact, for good reason, it might not. Now, the Supreme Court, in many instances, has the discretion to grant or not grant uri. Um, and, uh, I think a, a difference of what we're talking about is perhaps 11 cases, or 11 rulings, or 14 rulings is a very curious measure of, of, uh, needing to add to additional Supreme Court justices, um, in committee. I think that stakeholders enlightened have enlightened that adding more justices will not help the perceived caseload issues that some of my colleagues have. Instead, it may do the opposite, creating more work and possibly more delays as more justices now need to review opinions, make modifications, et cetera. And I think if we're wrong on that, then this is a very expensive investment that we're making. We'll be investing over a million dollars to create two new Supreme Court justices. I don't think we're doing it with good data. Um, and that's, again, something that we need to be accountable to the taxpayers for. And because of that, um, and the other opposition that's been mentioned, I'll be voting No,

I wanted to address some of the questions about data and the courts. Uh, Senator Wilson has been very kind in his willingness to group 10 years of data altogether to say that the Supreme Court has been averaging 61 over the last 10 years. That's true. But we do have to look at the more recent data. In 2023, the Supreme Court only decided 27 cases that was the lowest output in the United States of America That year. In 2024, they decided about 45 cases. And this year, they're up to 58. And a lot of that is because of pressure that was placed on them. And that was because what they were trying to do was push everything down to the Court of Appeals and then ask for additional judges for the Court of appeals. Now, what, where a lot of the bottleneck has happened is not because they are necessarily under their own metrics, taking a lot of time to decide, because what they do is they say, we will take the decision. And they, they measure from the point that the parties are done briefing and or have oral argument. And that's what they measure for their performance. So everything is briefed and, and the the decision is submitted to them. But there is a docket, there is a management between when the appeal is filed all the way up until that point where oral argument occurs. And so what you end up having is oftentimes 7, 8, 9 extensions being granted to parties as they're filing their briefing. And, and that's not just the Supreme Court's fault. A lot of that is over the years, we've had problems with staffing for the Attorney General's office staffing for c for the, uh, uh, indigent Defense Commission. All along the way, there are some bottlenecks that are going on, and we've been starting to address those over and over again. Last year, we increased. Two years ago, we increased pay for the Attorney General's office. Last year, we increased the number of attorneys that they had. We've been working on grants for Indigent Defense Commission. And this is kind of the last piece. And so when you say they don't need help, you're only looking at the timing of when they oral, when they have oral argument to when the decision is issued. But you're not looking at the overall productivity, which has dropped substantially since 2022. And you're not looking at the, the amount of delay that for each of those parties. Oftentimes, criminal defendants sitting in jail waiting for their appeal to be heard, or civil defendants whose businesses are on the line. They're waiting and waiting and waiting for years and years. So now I have my own concerns, and I've had my own concerns about adding justices. However, we are adding three new district court judges. To my knowledge, that is the fastest expansion of resources for district court judges in the history of Utah. It is exactly what the, what the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice asked for when they said, we need more resources. We're putting an additional two judges in the Court of Appeals. This will help substantially with the log jam that has been happening in our courts. And all of you have received constituent concern as to the length of time it takes to prosecute a case. If I go to court right now in the fourth district, and I ask my, and I ask a judge and I say, Hey, we ha we ha here's my certificate of readiness for trial for this civil matter. When can I get a trial? Well, it's January of 2026. I don't get a trial until sometime in 2027 in almost every single court in the fourth district. So these resources that are going on underneath, I know everyone's arguing about the expansion of the Supreme Court. That has to happen at some point. We know we're on our way. We can take care of that now. But these additional five judges that are going on underneath that, that's a major help to our court system, which has been heavily bogged down. And if we don't get our court system right, that's where a lot of those basic things that our Constitution protects just fall apart. So I just don't want that to get lost in the middle of the political bickering that's been going on around this, that that ability to move resources into our courts is sorely, sorely needed. And this is taking care of that in a really big way. And for that, I, I think the bill sponsor his willingness to amend to address those needs. And I think, I think that especially on those district court levels, that's absolutely needed. And, and I think we're doing the right thing on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President. I, I think in summing, obviously we've had a great discussion. We've talked about personal opinions, um, that said, we don't need extra resources in the court appeals, or at least be the Supreme Court. Let me quote the, uh, the Governor Cox. He says, when I was interviewing justices for the Supreme Court, almost every one of them said they were worried about the wait times for decisions coming out and felt that we needed more support, both at the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Their opinions mattered. Their concern. Mr. President, I'd like to ask for a call of the Senate,

Thank you, Mr. President. I, I move that second substitute Senate Bill 1 34 pass.

Thank you President. Uh, I, I, I worry, as we've discussed this, the, the optics that we have heard about are very disturbing here. Uh, by adding more justices to the Supreme Court, I think we are going to see a situation that creates more division, less trust in the courts. Uh, this decision that we're making today follows on changes to the process for nominations in the last couple of years that are sending us more, uh, conservative ideological judges. Just look at who we recently appointed, uh, for the most recent position on the Supreme Court. So I worry that we are just moving in a direction to further politicize things when we are hearing from our legal community, uh, that they don't actually support these things. I, I think there are, uh, there, there should be a split path here. We could consider, uh, the Supreme Court funding, the Supreme Court expansion at a different time with a, a waiting period or something along those lines. And, and do what I think everyone agrees is the right thing with the lower courts. Um, so I I will be a no on this bill. Uh, and I, I worry about the direction in the message this sends

Just wanted to explain my vote. Um, I don't like that it feels like we're holding the lower court support hostage. Um, we can only add the support they need if we add to the Supreme Court. And I think that in a year when we have such a lean budget, we're having to make 81.5 million cuts in health and human services. Um, this money could be better allocated if we had an implementation and expanded the Supreme Court at a later date if that was still desired. Um, and I will be listening to my constituents who've asked me to vote no.

Mr. President, as we take a look at the, uh, workload in the state, uh, we're adding three new district judges, which I support, and two more pal judges with I, which I support. The workload flows, flows upward. Therefore, I think we do need the Supreme Court judges under the scenario, therefore, I vote. Aye.

Thank you Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker. This bill that we have before us hopefully is seen in the Spirit with which it is offered, which is that of one in hopes of being helpful. As you recall, Mr. Speaker, the Chief Justice came on the floor of this house several weeks ago and offered a solution whereby this body with working with the Senate, could provide additional resources to the courts to allow them to be more efficient, more effective, and more responsive. We have, we have heard the, the inquiry and the request of the Chief Justice and hopefully have acted accordingly with the provisions of this bill. In this bill, Mr. Speaker, we add a couple of Supreme Court justices, a couple of Court of appeals judges, a co, a couple of court district judges, and, and provide some technical changes therein it is again, Mr. Speaker, this bill is, is placed before the body, and I hope my colleagues will support it because it is meant to be helpful, not hurtful. It is meant to be an improvement, not a criticism. And so with that, Mr. Speaker, I would yield to any questions from the body.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to the bill. Uh, I do wanna say that the bill does some good, and I wanna start off there and, and, and credit to the good, uh, um, good sponsor from Paradise. I've also spoken with the, uh, good senator here, uh, who informed me that, uh, a lot of resources are being allocated to clerks and to district court judges, which is sorely needed because that's the element of our courts that interface with the public, and it's that part of the branch of government that's necessary for the public to access. What concerns me here is the great expense that would have to be incurred by the state to expand the Supreme Court. The Matheson Courthouse was built, built with a five member Supreme Court in mind. In order to expand the bench, we'd have to build new offices. We'd have to expand the DAAs, the fiscal note here, notes that'll cost $1.7 million to reconstruct the fifth story of the Matheson Courthouse alone loan. This includes reconstruction of Supreme Court offices. Mr. Speaker, these are not individual offices as we know them. They're they're suites. They include rooms for law clerks. They include private bathrooms, meeting spots to meet with other judges. They require a lot of renovation. They're quite expensive to expand. Furthermore, this fiscal note notes that, uh, it's gonna cost $793,000 to pay for the salaries of Supreme Court Justices and their clerks. This is an ongoing expense. Supreme Court justices are appointed for life. This is not an amount of money we could ever dial back if we take this step forward. This amount of money is committed forever in perpetuity in this state. It's my hope that the entirety of expense in this bill be targeted and funneled to the clerks and the District Court judges to help the access to justice issues that we have. The courts have issued a wishlist to us. At the top. They've asked for support for their staff and for their judiciary clerks and assistance. Nowhere in their wishlist have they asked for two Supreme Court justices. Based on that, it is my fond hope that we reject the premise of two Supreme Court justices, but instead use the resource allocated here, Mr. Speaker, to help the people that actually interface with the public of Utah. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Would the sponsor yield to a series of questions?

Will Mr. Speaker, how many cases each year is our Supreme Court getting? Thank

You, Mr. Speaker, for the question. I do not know the exact number.

Mr. Speaker, do you know how many decisions they're issuing?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. While I do not know the exact number, I will tell you not nearly enough. We have cases that have been stuck before that court for years, and hopefully with a little more resources and a couple more eyes, the court will help us move forward.

Mr. Speaker, are you aware of the backlog in our district courts?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker for the question. I am, which is why a district additional judges have also been provided in this bill for those courts.

And Mr. Speaker, would it surprise you to know that the backlog in district court is far greater than the backlog in our appellate courts?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question, though I would remind my good colleague from Salt Lake County, I am not in his courtroom at the moment. Uh, I, I am appreciative to know that there are courses, uh, backlog of cases there and hopefully that these additional judges that we provide will help in that instance.

Thank you Mr. Speaker. And I want to echo the comments of our, our Good Pirate colleague from Salt Lake County. We have a huge backlog in our district courts, and I, I appreciate this bill, that it starts to address that issue. We do not have a backlog in our appellate courts and especially not at the Supreme Court. Um, this bill increases the complexity of our courts. I mean, we look at us as, as a body, if we had five people, it would be far easier to get to a decision, but we have 75 of us and that's how it's structured. And it's not that we don't have the ability under our purview to change the number of justices, but we're adding complexity. We're adding debate time. And I don't think that this is the route. If we wanna speed up our cases, really what we need to do is look at the rules, make sure we have the resources. The holdup is in the district court and, and occasionally in the Court of appeals, but it's not the Supreme Court. And while I appreciate that this does put some resources towards those lower two bodies, I don't think it goes far enough. And because of that, I will be voting. No. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker and colleagues. I just wanna rise in support of this. I know, uh, we've had a lot of discussions on this bill, but if you take a step back and look at the population size of our state and the workload that our courts have, this bill has been needed for a while now. Uh, the vast majority of states, in fact, 34 other states currently have Supreme Courts with either seven or nine justices. This bill is just expanding two more, uh, to seven while adding two additional appellate judges and three additional district judges. If you look at the 10 states closest to Utah, all of them have either seven or nine justices. And other states have recognized the same need within their court to, to add additional justices so that they can help carry the load of a growing state. Both Georgia and Arizona actually just went from seven to nine justices within the last decade. Uh, and additionally, when we established the five justices for Utah, that happened in 1917 when our state population was 400,000 people. We now have 3.5 million residents with still the same five justices, which is why we see this need to make a moderate change of going from five to seven while also acknowledging the backlog and workload at the lower levels by adding to the district and appellate courts. I appreciate the good sponsor's work on this and would ask for our colleague support.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, I appreciate the discussion that we have had on the floor, and I appreciate the comments made on both sides of this aisle. What I think we, again, hold in common, regardless of your position on this issue, is that there are not enough resources within our courts. Now, there may be some discussion at the highest levels, uh, what is too many and what are too few. But I would err on the side that 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 as our state continues to grow. Mr. Speaker, we must recognize that the current foundation of the court, the current five man member panel was established in 1917. Think of how the world and how this state, Mr. Speaker has changed since then. And I am confident given our rapid changes and growth that we will only become the issues facing our court will only become more complicated and difficult. And I'm thankful for the men and women that sit in those seats that act as judges for this state. And hopefully with the resources we provide here in this bill, they will be able to be that much more successful in the pursuit of justice for the citizens of this state. So again, Mr. Speaker, ask my colleagues for support on this bill. Thank you.