Utah Court of Appeals
2024 UT App 126
The Utah Court of Appeals concluded that a group of landowners lacked statutory standing to challenge Grantsville’s annexation of an area proposed to be included within the new city of Erda; however, the Court remanded to assess whether there was traditional standing to bring constitutional challenges.
After several property owners in the unincorporated community of Erda began the process to incorporate into a new city, one opposed landowner that was included in the proposed incorporation area instead began a petition to annex 550 acres of land into nearby Grantsville city, which was filed around the time that public hearings were being conducted on the feasibility studies for Erda’s incorporation.
After learning of the annexation petition, the Erda incorporation sponsors urged Grantsville to reject the annexation citing certain deficiencies of the petition under the annexation code. Ultimately, Grantsville approved the annexation while the initiative measure to incorporate Erda was pending on the ballot.
The Erda sponsors filed a lawsuit that petitioned for judicial review of an “illegal land use decision” under LUDMA, and also requested declaratory relief on a constitutional basis, claiming the annexation violated their due process rights. In litigation, the sponsors also argued the petition violated Utah’s constitutional protection of citizen initiative rights, and that if they are not allowed the right to challenge Grantsville decision, this would violate the open courts provision of Utah’s constitution.
The district court dismissed the case, concluding the sponsors lacked statutory standing as not falling under any category of persons mentioned in the annexation code that could bring a challenge. The court, however, did not assess traditional standing to bring independent constitutional claims, and the sponsors appealed.
The Utah Court of Appeals agreed that the sponsors lacked statutory standing, but disagreed with the decision to dismiss all claims without undergoing a separate analysis of traditional standing for the alleged constitutional claims. The Court of Appeals determined that it was not clear from the existing record that the sponsors lacked traditional standing, which requires a showing of injury, causation, and redressibility. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals remanded the case to the district court to assess traditional standing for the sponsors’ constitutional claims.
**Note: two months following this opinion, the Court of Appeals also decided Erda Comty. Ass’n v. Skywalk Dev., 2024 UT App 161. The Court of Appeals noted that the Skywalk case involves identical legal issues of standing, just with a different parcel of land that was also annexed into Grantsville while the Erda incorporation was pending. The Court of Appeals reached the same legal conclusions on standing in the Skywalk matter; however, there was an additional distinct issue of an award of attorneys fees that is also addressed in that opinion.
