The Utah Legislature appears poised to expand the Utah Supreme Court from five justices to seven during the 2026 legislative session. State Sen. Todd Weiler said on his local podcast this week that the expansion could happen in the first week of the session.
“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, ABC 4 reported.
Weiler made the remarks while hosting the right-leaning podcast Political as Heck with attorney Corey Astill. The discussion centered on a recent special session and the impact of Judge Dianna Gibson’s November ruling on Utah’s redistricting maps.
Gibson ruled that the Legislature failed to follow Utah’s anti-gerrymandering ballot initiative, Proposition 4, when it redrew congressional districts after court intervention.
Weiler said the ruling took what he described as a small amount of power away from lawmakers.
Gibson has directed the lieutenant governor to resolve boundary issues involving district lines that cut through homes and apartment buildings.
Weiler argued that if lawmakers had drawn the maps themselves, the legislature would have retained authority over those decisions.
Astill said he hopes the Utah Supreme Court will hear an appeal of the 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.
Weiler noted that Utah’s Constitution allows the Legislature to determine the number of Supreme Court justices.
“When we were a state in 1896 with less than 300,000 people, we had five Supreme Court justices,” Weiler said.
“Now that we’re 3.5 million people, we still have five Supreme Court justices,” he added.
The idea of expanding the state’s high court has been discussed for years, though the timing of a vote in the first week of the session has not been finalized.
Legislative sources familiar with the discussions confirmed to ABC 4 that lawmakers are considering the governor’s proposal.
Weiler said he first floated the idea of court expansion three or four years ago.
Gov. Spencer Cox said last month that he supports increasing the number of justices.
During the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers opened a bill file to expand the court but later abandoned the effort.
The renewed push comes amid heightened tensions between the legislature and the judiciary.
Lawmakers have criticized a 2024 ruling limiting the Legislature’s ability to amend voter-approved initiatives without a compelling public interest justification.
Republican lawmakers have labeled the ruling a “super law,” arguing it elevates citizen initiatives above statutes passed by lawmakers.
Lawmakers have also cited growing appellate and Supreme Court caseloads as justification for expanding the court.
According to the National Center for State Courts, 28 states have seven Supreme Court justices, 17 have five, and the remaining states have nine.
