Utah Supreme Court hears dispute over whether Tooele County rezoning triggers higher referendum signature threshold

Salt Lake City —The Utah Supreme Court heard arguments in Haney v. Tooele County over whether a 2020 Tooele County ordinance rezoning parcels for a planned community is subject to the election code's higher referendum signature threshold for "land use law," or the lower signature threshold that applies to ordinary local laws.

The question matters because sponsors of the referendum collected more than the lower 9.5% threshold but fell 763 signatures short of the 16% threshold the county applied; the district court adopted the county's interpretation and refused to certify the referendum.

Appellant counsel Janet Conway told the court the election code's definition of "land use law" is ambiguous and that the district court erred in importing definitions from land-use statutes to declare the ordinance a land use regulation. "In order to resolve the ambiguity, the district court imported Ludma's…