Utah Supreme Court

And so that's why a lot of Latter-day Saint leaders, including Dallin H. Oaks, have emphasized religious toleration and pluralism at the heart of that experiment.

Well, let's move to that fourth phase, and a key figure is Dallin H. Oaks, the current president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though he's, of course, justice of the Utah Supreme Court, former constitutional scholar.

So tell me, his views, publicly stated, that's a shift from, say, Ezra Taft Benson's views, say, of the Constitution.

Yeah, Dallin H. Oaks has delivered a number of important addresses during his ecclesiastical career.

But, uh, yeah, let me get down to this part here where, uh, you recall that a citizen ballot initiative, uh, rejecting gerrymandering and instead requiring that redistricting, one, be done once a decade following the census as originally intended, and two, that it be handled by a non-partisan redistricting commission, an independent redistricting commission instead of the legislature.

But the legislature didn't like that, so they tried to nullify the duly passed, uh, ballot initiative, and then just for good measure, pass an- a- another law in the legislature granting themselves the right to nullify citizen initiatives passed on the ballot because it wasn't entirely clear that they had such power, and the Utah Supreme Court said that they didn't.

But that in addition to granting themselves the power legislatively, they also attempted to impeach the justices of the Supreme Court who said they didn't have this power, and also said, "We're also going to expand the Supreme Court to drown out the voices that say we don't have this power," which is interesting all by itself.

And, uh, we got, it got us into the discussion of, once again, if there's any validity at all to the argument that, uh, court expansion, Supreme Court expansion at the federal level is, uh, or should be considered a non-starter either because we learned in high school that it was a non-starter in the 1930s and so therefore, or that we shouldn't do it or couldn't do it now because if we do, the Republicans will just retaliate and expand the Supreme Court right back or un-expand the Supreme Court or depending on, you know, I don't know what kind of approach that they would necessarily take, but that they could do it right back and that that was supposed to dissuade you from doing it.

The Heber Temple back in the news.

The Utah Supreme Court.

Going to weigh in.

Red ledges have said, hey, listen, we're not just going to be some pushovers, and we're not just being a bunch of jerks.

We've got feelings.

So that's going to the Utah Supreme Court, and they'll finally rule on that.

As we speak this morning, Friday morning, they're having the arguments at the Supreme Court, 9 a.m. on Friday.

Okay.

If the burden is fundamentally the same, the court may allow the expansion.

Right, and the Utah Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion in the Lutheran High School case, correct?

Yes.

The school built a parking deck on after-acquired land, but the traffic was entirely generated by the original dominant estate.

I'm Cormac Bone in the KSL Traffic Center.

A Utah Supreme Court justice has recused himself from hearing a lawsuit concerning Utah's abortion ban.

Justice John Nielsen worked as a private attorney before his time on the high court and says he was not directly involved in the 2022 lawsuit, but was counsel for Pro-Life Utah's team.

Arguments in the Planned Parenthood lawsuit will be heard next month.

It's quite a shameful history.

So surely the Utah Supreme Court, if they're looking at a religious liberty claim, might say, "This is something we really value." The Texas Supreme Court, I'm pretty confident people of Texas value religious liberty.

So there's something where a state that maybe has a more secular population, that's not something they have to prioritize as much.

So what this gives you is this wonderful benefit.

which requires probable cause that defendant knowingly created a risk of death to another individual other than the deceased individual and defendant.

State Versosa Hurtado, 2019, Utah, provides the controlling Utah Supreme Court analysis.

The court explained that the relevant circumstances are not necessarily confined to the precise act causing death.

A risk-creating act occurring within a brief span of time may qualify when it forms part of a sufficiently connected series of events surrounding the murder.