Utah voters to decide on constitutional amendment granting legislature power to amend or repeal initiatives and banning foreign influence on ballot measures

Voters in Utah will decide on a constitutional amendment to provide the Utah State Legislature with explicit power to amend or repeal voter-approved ballot initiatives. The constitutional amendment would also ban foreign individuals, entities, or governments from influencing, supporting, or opposing initiatives and referendums.

On Aug. 21, 2024, the Utah State Legislature referred the constitutional amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 401 (SJR 401), to the ballot for Nov. 5, 2024. In the Senate, the vote was 20-8. Two Republicans joined the six Senate Democrats to oppose the amendment. The remaining 20 Senate Republicans voted for the amendment. In the House, the amendment passed 54-21. All 14 House Democrats opposed the amendment, while Republicans were divided 54-7.

The state legislature convened a special session to pass the constitutional amendment in response to a recent ruling by the Utah Supreme Court in League of Women Voters v. Utah State Legislature. The litigation challenged the legislature’s repeal and replacement of Proposition 4, a 2018 voter-approved initiative that sought to establish an independent advisory redistricting commission. Under Proposition 4, the commission would recommend redistricting maps to the state legislature, which would then be required to either enact or reject them. If the legislature rejected a commission-recommended map, it would have been required to create its own map using the same criteria outlined in Proposition 4. One provision of Proposition 4 was designed to explicitly prohibit the practice of “divid[ing] districts in a manner that purposefully or unduly favors or disfavors any incumbent elected official, candidate or prospective candidate for elective office, or any political party.”

In the lawsuit, plaintiffs said that the state legislature “rescinded critical Proposition 4 reforms and enacted watered-down versions of others,” and stated that the legislative redistricting process violated Utahns’ right to vote and right to free speech by dividing Salt Lake County, a county with the state’s largest concentration of voters for minority parties, into four congressional districts.

The court ruled on July 11, 2024, that the state legislature could not repeal or undo an initiative meant to reform government, writing that “the people’s right to alter or reform the government through an initiative is constitutionally protected from government infringement, including legislative amendment, repeal, or replacement of the initiative in a manner that impairs the reform enacted by the people.”

Nationally, 21 states allow citizens to initiate state statutes, with 10 states having some type of restriction on how and when the legislature can amend or repeal them. Utah is one of 11 states without restrictions on the legislature’s ability to alter or repeal citizen initiatives, at least before the court ruling.

Between 2010 and 2022, Utah voters approved three initiated state statutes, all of which were on the ballot in 2018. The state legislature subsequently amended all three. During the same period 23 constitutional amendments were placed on the Utah ballot by the state legislature, with 18 (78.26%) receiving voter approval.