Nonprofit’s lawsuit challenges not only Stratos Project, but MIDA’s code

A progressive nonprofit is suing the Military Installation Development Authority over the Stratos Project, a massive data center campus proposed in Box Elder County. But the lawsuit’s challenge goes beyond that specific project, arguing that the authority’s framework is unconstitutional and cuts off citizens’ legislative rights.

Alliance for a Better Utah and five unnamed Box Elder County residents claim that the Utah Constitution gives Utah citizens legislative power through ballot initiatives and referendums. However, when local government representatives confirm a MIDA project area, their consent becomes irrevocable, according to the entity’s regulatory framework. 

That, the lawsuit says, cuts off Box Elder County citizens’ rights to initiate a referendum to challenge the deal.

This is the second legal challenge the Stratos Project has faced this week.

Trying to get the Stratos data center on the ballot, locals are now appealing to a judge 

The constitution “gives the Utah state legislature a limited power to regulate the means by which citizens may exercise their rights of direct democracy, but it does not and cannot authorize that body, by means of a statute such as the MIDA act, to extinguish those pre-existing rights entirely.”

Senate President Stuart Adams and Sen. Jerry Stevenson, both Republicans from Layton who serve on the MIDA board, and the Box Elder County Commission are also named in the suit filed in Utah’s 3rd District Court.

Spokespeople for MIDA and the Utah Senate said the defendants are reviewing the lawsuit and don’t have any comment on it.

The lawsuit also criticizes that the officials on the MIDA board, who don’t live in the area and were not elected by local citizens, would be in charge of a large swath of the county, turning it over to private development.

“Development which may have considerable impact on the quality of life of every citizen in Northern Utah, particularly as it may reduce further the water level of the Great Salt Lake. It may affect air quality, water availability, and have other environmental impacts. It may increase population density, urban crime, and tax burdens,” the lawsuit says.

The Stratos Project, a proposal backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary that became public in recent months, has caused a stir in the state. Utahns were caught by surprise from the quick approval process for the campus, its size and potential environmental impacts. 

The staggering public outrage across the state has led elected officials who had fiercely defended the project, including Gov. Spencer Cox, to backtrack their statements and make further commitments to slow down permits for data centers. O’Leary also agreed Thursday to cut the project’s footprint in half, taking it from 40,000 acres to 20,000 acres, after an appeal from Adams.

‘A substantial invasion’ of rights

The lawsuit calls the MIDA statute that allowed the prompt approval of the deal between MIDA and Box Elder County “a substantial invasion of the rights of Box Elder County residents to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without ensuring that those rights are protected by the consent of the governed through fundamental principles of representative democracy found in Utah’s Constitution.”

Actions taken by MIDA and the Box Elder County Commission, the lawsuit says, also “puts lawmaking power respecting questions of public health, safety, welfare, morals, taxation, zoning, land use, and the like, in relation to a significant swath of county territory in a non-elected MIDA Board and the Interlocal Agreement’s special commission.”

Plaintiffs also claim that the MIDA board decision to approve the Stratos Project should be nullified, since, they say, Adams and Stevenson’s appointments to the MIDA board is in violation of the constitution “which forbids plural office holding by legislators in the state of Utah.”

“One purpose – among others – which is served by these constitutional mandates is to prevent conflicts of interest,” the lawsuit says. “Adams and Stevenson, by working simultaneously on MIDA’s Board and in the state legislature, are serving multiple masters with distinct, often clashing, interests.”