Week One: The Posture
What the Utah Legislature’s First Moves Tell Us About the 2026 Session
We are entering Day Five of the Utah Legislative Session. Technically, actually seven because the Legislature counts weekends towards the 45 days, believe it or not.
Week one is when the Legislature shows you its posture. Not the outcomes yet, but the stance. What it’s going to rush, what it’s going to make jokes about, what it’s going to treat as routine and what (or who) it is going to treat as collateral damage.
And we are seeing the same supermajority that has become familiar at this point. The same fixation on control. The same confidence that there will be no real consequences for moving fast, breaking norms, or targeting the same communities over and over again. What’s changed isn’t the agenda, so far, it’s their comfort level. Their ease. Their lack of pretense.
You can see it in what moved quickly, what was laughed off, and you can definitely see it in what was dismissed as an overreaction, even when people were begging for protection in the room.
So, before we get into individual bills, it’s worth grounding ourselves in what week one actually taught us about what is coming ahead.
As a reminder:
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Email us at hillyeah@elevateutah.news when something looks… suspicious
What Week One Tells You
You know what I have always said? What’s the best way to kick off session? Four white men in rotating stages of hair loss, solemnly quoting Abraham Lincoln before doing the exact opposite.
The Governor delivers the State of the State. The Senate President and the Speaker of the House outline their visions for their chambers. The Chief Justice gives the State of the Judiciary. There’s a lot of history, a lot of language about responsibility, and a lot of talk about long-term thinking and restraint (huh).
Governor Spencer Cox warned against legislating too much, urged patience over political urgency, and leaned heavily on the idea that good government requires humility, restraint, and respect for institutions (wild contradictions). The Senate President, Stuart Adams, framed the session around responsibility, stability, and Utah’s role as a steady hand in uncertain times. Speaker of the House, Mike Schultz, wrapped those themes in Utah history and legacy, arguing that true leadership means making unpopular choices now in service of future generations.
On paper, the opening speeches asked for patience and trust. The first week of legislative action made clear neither would be reciprocated.
Because while individual speeches make for good clips, the real story is told by the supermajority as a governing body. And in week one, the supermajority controls everything: the Rules Committee (first cut), committee agendas (second cut), bill assignments (where favorites are made clear), and the calendar, because “we ran out of time” is the most effective argument in the building.
If the speeches were the guide, you’d expect early momentum around housing, water, early literacy, or cost-of-living relief. You’d expect fewer bills, slower movement, and an emphasis on problems Utahns actually feel every day.
That’s not what moved.
Instead, the earliest action went to bills that consolidate power, expand enforcement, and narrow who is protected by law.
Week One: What Actually Moved
A few patterns emerged almost immediately.
Courts Moved First (and Fast)
Judicial power bills were among the very first to advance. SB134 proposes expanding Utah’s appellate courts:
The Utah Supreme Court would grow from five justices to seven.
The Court of Appeals would expand from seven judges to nine.
Additional district court judges and staff are added as part of the package.
That last part is important. Utah’s trial courts are under-resourced. Caseloads are heavy. More judges and staff are genuinely needed.
That’s the sweetener.
The problem is where the expansion happens — and why.
The Legislature’s Case
Supporters of SB134 argue that this is about efficiency and workload. More judges, they say, means faster decisions and more eyes on complex issues. They point out that other states have larger appellate courts and insist this is a neutral, administrative update.
If this bill were only about funding trial courts, it would likely be uncontroversial. But it isn’t.
No One Is Asking for This
Leadership from the Utah Supreme Court and the Utah State Bar stated plainly that expanding the Supreme Court would not solve their primary challenges and could actually slow decision-making and complicate case management.
Even more telling, many supporters of the bill testified that they only supported the lower court funding, not the Supreme Court expansion. Amendments were offered that implicitly acknowledged the real issue wasn’t ideology, it was resources.
And yet, the expansion stayed in.
Twice as many people testified against the bill as in favor. The room was full of lawyers, judges, and advocates warning that structural changes to the judiciary should not be rushed, politicized, or retaliatory.
The bill passed anyway. But the vibe in the room from the Senator’s bench was very clear: celebratory, relieved, almost giddy.
Why This Is Retaliation
Context is everything. In recent years, Utah courts have ruled against the Legislature on some of its most aggressive power grabs. Congressional maps. Voter-approved reforms. Constitutional limits the Legislature didn’t like.
SB134 doesn’t come out of a long-term judicial planning process. It comes after losses.
And now, the legislature wants to add more justices in order to get the outcomes they want in the ongoing litigation process.
And it doesn’t exist alone. Alongside SB134 are:
A constitutional amendment that weakens the judicial nominating commission.
A bill raising judicial retention elections from a simple majority to a 67 percent threshold.
Taken together, these moves do three things:
Change who gets on the bench.
Change how long seats can remain vacant.
Change how easily judges can be removed.
Why Everyone Should Care
Court packing sounds abstract until you realize what courts are for. They’re the backstop.
They’re where challenges to unconstitutional laws go. They’re where minority rights get enforced. They’re where the Legislature is told “no” when it crosses a line.
Once you politicize the judiciary, that backstop weakens.
This sets a dangerous precedent: if lawmakers don’t like how courts rule, they expand them. If future courts push back again, they expand them again. Judicial independence becomes conditional on legislative approval.
2. Immigration Bills Moved in One Direction Only
Immigration-related legislation arrived in clusters, and the direction was clear.
Bills expanding enforcement, surveillance, and exclusion advanced quickly. Bills that would have created even narrow limits or protections did not.
HB209, which creates a two-tier voting system based on citizenship documentation, passed out of committee on a party-line vote. It expands voter roll investigations and shifts the burden onto voters to prove eligibility on short timelines.
At the same time, SB136 — a bill that would have placed narrow limits on ICE activity in courthouses, churches, and libraries — was killed in committee.
(We have A LOT of thoughts on this committee meeting and so we will have more on that in a separate piece)
3. Early Pressure on the Environment
A couple of environmental bills were some of the fastest moving this first week.
HB16, the bill reshaping how large-scale solar projects are approved, moved quickly. Supporters framed it as a long-overdue correction: farmland should feed people, not panels; rural counties should have more say; developers shouldn’t get a free pass. For some farmers and local officials, those arguments resonate. Land use matters. Incentives matter. And the tension between agricultural preservation and energy development is real.
But the timing and structure of the bill matter just as much as the talking points. HB16 adds new permitting hurdles, layers of approval, and incentive cutoffs that make utility-scale solar significantly harder to build, at a moment when Utah’s population is growing, energy demand is rising, and air quality remains a public health issue. What’s being framed as balance adds friction to the process and friction slows energy development at exactly the moment demand is rising.
HB60 moved alongside it, narrowing who gets to challenge new water rights and stripping out long-standing requirements that the state consider impacts to public welfare, recreation, and natural stream environments. In a vacuum, that might sound procedural. In the context of the Great Salt Lake’s ongoing collapse, it’s anything but.
This is a state already living with the consequences of delayed environmental action: toxic dust, shrinking water supplies, and rising health risks. And yet, the bills that moved first weren’t about accelerating conservation or protecting shared resources. They were about limiting objections, narrowing standing, and making it easier to move forward without answering uncomfortable questions.
Environmental organizations do know of some positive bills this session to help strengthen protections for everything from the Great Salt Lake to air quality. Which is exactly why we have partnered with:
for our weekly Hill Talk event with our friends at Better Utah and Better Boundaries.
Come this Wednesday (1/28) at 6:00 at Church and State to learn more directly from these partners and find ways to take action right now.
What You Can Actually Do
The next week’s of session will continue to move faster, get louder, and even more insufferable. But just remember, you don’t need to track every bill to matter.
Right now:
Find a bill or two that you feel strongly about, and reach out to the bill sponsor, the committee chair if it’s been assigned to one, and your representatives.
Committee hearings matter more than floor votes. Showing up in person or virtually can have a very big impact.
If you can’t attend in person, share explainers, call offices, and back the groups doing the work.
We’ll keep updating the bill tracker with what we support, oppose, and the pure crazy. We’ll flag action alerts and attempt to keep translating what’s happening in real time.
But don’t let them wear you out. Legislative sessions run on fatigue.
They count on people tuning out, assuming someone else is watching, or deciding it’s all too much to follow. That’s when the worst bills move the fastest.
You don’t have to be an expert. You just have to stay connected.
We’ve still got 38 days left. That’s a long time and also, not nearly enough.
Thanks for all your information. Also, while I know you focus on state level activities, I suspect the speakers this week will know that Maloy is also using the CRA to attack Escalante the way they are doing with the Boundary Waters in MN. So in addn to calling our federal legislators about ICE, we have to add that concern.
Informative, but really tough and depressing read. Feeling pretty powerless rn…