Group calls on justice to recuse from redistricting case because he signed Prop 4 repeal effort

A progressive advocacy group is calling on a Utah Supreme Court justice to recuse himself from the state’s ongoing anti-gerrymandering court battle after reports that he signed a petition to repeal Utah’s 2018 voter-approved independent redistricting law before he was appointed to the bench. 

Alliance for a Better Utah called on Justice Michael Menssen to recuse himself from the case and “every related proceeding over” Better Boundaries’ Proposition 4 and litigation involving Utah’s congressional maps. 

The nonprofit’s call comes after ABC4 reported Menssen’s name appeared on a publicly available list of more than 161,000 Utahns who signed the petition circulated by the Utah Republican Party earlier this year. The petition’s supporters failed to gather enough signatures, so the question of whether to repeal Proposition 4 didn’t qualify to appear on this year’s ballot.

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Menssen signed the petition on Feb. 12, according to the list. That was about seven months before Utah Gov. Spencer Cox appointed him to the state’s highest court. At the time, Menssen was working as a civil litigator as a partner at the firm Mayer Brown. 

“As a private citizen, Michael Menssen had every right to sign that petition. But he is not a private citizen anymore,” Katie Matheson, executive director of Alliance for a Better Utah said in a statement issued Wednesday. “He now sits on the court deciding the very lawsuit that seeks to enforce Prop 4, and he has already heard arguments in the case. When a judge has personally signed on to one side of a fight, the public has every reason to question his impartiality.”

Menssen sat on the bench earlier this month when the Utah Supreme Court heard arguments over whether the redistricting case — along with two others — should be transferred away from a district court judge and instead to a three-judge panel the Utah Legislature created earlier this year specifically meant to hear constitutional challenges to state laws. 

Justice John Nielsen recused himself from two of those hearings (the abortion and redistricting cases) due to past work he did as a private attorney for Pro-Life Utah in 2022 and the Utah Republican Party in a prior appeal to the underlying anti-gerrymandering lawsuit. 

Menssen, however, stayed on and didn’t recuse himself.

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“The normal standards and procedures for recusal decisions have been considered and followed,” a court spokesperson said in a statement to Utah News Dispatch on Wednesday. 

Alliance for a Better Utah pointed to a Utah code of judicial conduct rule that requires judges to disqualify themselves “in any proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

“This is not about whether Justice Menssen is a capable lawyer or a decent person. It is about whether Utahns can trust the outcome,” Matheson said. 

The nonprofit said it’s calling on Menssen to recuse himself from the case before the Utah Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the three-judge panel. It’s also asking the court to “explain publicly how his recusal was evaluated and why he chose not to recuse before hearing the arguments.”

“Utahns passed Proposition 4 because they wanted fair maps drawn under fair rules,” Matheson said. “They deserve fair judges deciding whether those rules get followed.”

Other groups including Better Boundaries — which successfully sought Proposition 4 in 2018 — and the plaintiffs in the redistricting case had not weighed in as of Wednesday afternoon over whether they supported the call for Menssen to recuse.