The Utah State Supreme Court handed down its ruling last week in Salt Lake City’s suit against the Inland Port Authority. One of the main aspects of the suit was about usurpation of the city’s land use authority, delegating it to the Port Authority.
Salt Lake City was challenging the legislature’s ability to override the local land use regulations by stipulating that the city’s zoning code
“shall allow an inland port as a permitted or conditional use,” and that “the transporting, unloading, loading, transfer, or temporary storage of natural resources may not be prohibited on the authority jurisdictional land. “
The city was basing its challenge on two points – first, that the legislation was treating the city differently from other cities in its same class. The state constitution has the following provision:
The Uniform Operation of Laws Clause requires that ―[a]ll laws of a general nature shall have uniform operation. UTAH CONST. art. I, § 24
The Court essentially disposed of that argument by saying that the legislation creating the Inland Port Authority created a new classification – those communities with port authorities and those without. Those in the class with a port authority could be treated differently than those without one, as long as all in that class are treated similarly.
The second argument was that the port authority legislation violated the Ripper Clause of the state constitution. The Ripper Cause states
[t]he Legislature shall not delegate to any special commission, private corporation or association, any power to make, supervise or interfere with any municipal improvement, money, property or effects, whether held in trust or otherwise, to levy taxes, to select a capitol site, or to perform any municipal functions. UTAH CONST. art. VI, § 28
In this case, however, the Court said that the legislature’s actions
do not delegate power to any outside group or entity. … Here the legislature is not entrusting UIPA with the task or responsibility of enacting certain zoning ordinances. … These are legislative mandates directed at municipalities.
They are not a delegation of municipal land use authority, which is what I figured when I first heard about the suit. The legislature giveth zoning authority, and it can taketh it away, or at least stipulate what local governments can and can’t do with it. Its decision to create a port authority and stipulate that the municipalities where it is located must in their zoning provisions allow for its activities is entirely a discretionary legislative act, which must be justified as being the in the public interest and provide for the public benefit. As Craig Call so ably states in our land use training seminars, this is a very low bar to clear, and the courts will stay out of this arena as it is clearly a legislative decision, not a judicial one. The court in this case said about the inland port act:
The Act‘s ―statewide public purpose‖ is ―to maximize the long-term economic and other benefit for the state. UTAH CODE § 11-58-201(3)(a). Economic studies underlying the Act projected that an inland port could create thousands of jobs, develop natural resource extraction industries, and make Utah a bigger player in the global economy.4 These are legitimate objectives. And the classification is reasonably related to furthering them—by clearing the way for the port by requiring these cities to ―allow an inland port‖ and preventing them from prohibiting activities necessary to operate it. UTAH CODE §§ 11-58-205(5), -205(6).
You can read the entire ruling here https://www.utcourts.gov/opinions/supopin/Salt%20Lake%20City%20v.%20Inland%20Port%20Authority20220629.pdf