NEW: Republicans Take New Steps To Add An Additional Two Seats To A Supreme Court

The Utah Legislature is moving toward expanding the state Supreme Court from five justices to seven, a change that could be fast-tracked when lawmakers convene for the 2026 session.

State Sen. Todd Weiler said on his local podcast this week that the expansion could happen almost immediately.

“Like most states of our size, we’re going to go up to seven, and that will probably happen in the first week of the session,” Weiler said, according to ABC 4.

Weiler made the comments while hosting the right-leaning podcast Political as Heck alongside attorney Corey Astill. The conversation focused on a recent special session and fallout from a November ruling by Judge Dianna Gibson that struck down Utah’s congressional maps.

Gibson ruled that lawmakers violated Utah’s anti-gerrymandering ballot initiative, Proposition 4, when they redrew district lines following court involvement. The decision found the Legislature failed to follow voter-approved limits on partisan mapmaking.

Weiler said the ruling stripped what he described as a small but significant amount of power from lawmakers.

Gibson also ordered the lieutenant governor to resolve boundary disputes involving district lines that run through homes and apartment buildings.

Weiler argued that if lawmakers had retained control over drawing the maps, the Legislature would still have authority over those decisions.

Astill said he hopes the Utah Supreme Court will take up an appeal of Gibson’s ruling.

“It may very well be that the Supreme Court has two new members by the time the court takes this up because the governor has funded in his budget two additional members,” Weiler said.

Utah’s Constitution gives the Legislature broad authority over the makeup of the state Supreme Court, including how many justices sit on the bench, supporters of an expansion argue.

“When we were a state in 1896 with less than 300,000 people, we had five Supreme Court justices,” state Sen. Todd Weiler said.

“Now that we’re 3.5 million people, we still have five Supreme Court justices,” he added.

The idea of expanding Utah’s high court has circulated for years, though a final decision on voting during the first week of the 2026 legislative session has not been locked in. Legislative sources familiar with the talks told ABC 4 that lawmakers are actively weighing the governor’s proposal.

Weiler said he first raised the idea of adding justices three or four years ago. Gov. Spencer Cox publicly endorsed court expansion last month.

Lawmakers opened a bill file during the 2025 session to grow the court but ultimately shelved the effort.

The renewed push comes as friction between the Legislature and judiciary has intensified. Republican lawmakers have bristled at a 2024 ruling that limited their ability to amend voter-approved ballot initiatives without a compelling public interest justification.

Some GOP lawmakers have derided that decision as creating a “super law,” arguing it places citizen initiatives above statutes passed by elected legislators.

Supporters of expansion also point to rising appellate and Supreme Court caseloads as a practical reason to add seats.

According to the National Center for State Courts, 28 states have seven Supreme Court justices, 17 operate with five, and the remaining states have nine.

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