Get ready to fight an amendment.
I remember a certain president saying this: "We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning." This could encapsulate how we feel about our redistricting fight – a fight we have waged for more than a decade. And it’s a fight we continue to win, exhausting as it is.
The sad fact is that it isn’t over. The League of Women Voters has consistently won in court – the district court, the Utah Supreme Court, and the U.S. federal court. But the legislature will not give up. They attempted an initiative to overturn Proposition 4 and it, too, failed thanks to continued citizen activism.
We are challenging the legislature’s creation of a three-judge court and the contingent creation of a constitutional court. These are efforts to bypass the court system if the legislature disagrees with the outcome. We believe this, too, is unconstitutional.
It now appears that they will try to pass a constitutional amendment to emasculate the initiative process. We will be ready to fight that, too. You can catch up on our website through the Redistricting Blog.
In the meantime, other battlegrounds have arisen. We were unable to convince the legislature that our voting system is safe and robust. They passed SB153, which as many of you know, will end privacy for most Utah voting records. If you feel you still need protection, please reference our website, as it has more information for you.
On another privacy matter, the League has been allowed to intervene in a federal case against the Trump administration, which is seeking all Utah voting records. We believe this is an effort to create an unconstitutional national voter database.
We seem to be beset by lawsuits and have also joined in a friend-of-the-court brief over the state’s Utah Fits All Scholarship program (vouchers). In this case, it is to “provide the Court with important information about the negative effects of private school voucher programs, which undermine states’ ability to fulfill their constitutional obligation to provide high-quality public education to all students.”
Below is a summary of national actions. Because many of our leagues are interested in immigration actions, we have provided an action kit for your use.
Our brand new Federal Immigration Enforcement Action Kit is ready to be deployed by Leagues.