SALT LAKE CITY — A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld a Utah law overhauling how political parties nominate candidates, dealing another blow to the state’s Republican Party, whose multiyear legal challenge divided the deep-red state’s majority party and left it in heavy debt.
The Utah Republican Party argued the 2014 law, allowing candidates to bypass the party’s caucuses and nominating conventions and instead participate in a primary election, is unconstitutional. The party contends it has a right to set how it picks its nominees.
The Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the law balances Utah’s concern in managing elections while allowing political parties and residents a way to express their political choices.
“Not only does this balance not offend our Constitution, it is at its very essence,” the three-judge panel ruled.
Read more at The Spectrum.
