The University of Utah cannot ban guns on its campus in defiance of a state gun-rights law, the Utah Supreme Court ruled on Friday.
Utah legislators enacted a law in 2004 prohibiting government agencies, like the university, from adopting policies that would restrict the possession of a firearm on public or private property. In a 4-to-1 ruling, the court sided with the state attorney general, who defended the law and argued that the university had no autonomy under the Utah Constitution to ignore the law.
The university asserted that the law hindered academic freedom and that its institutional autonomy under the Utah Constitution allowed it to enforce the ban.
Michael K. Young, the university’s president, said on Friday in a written statement that while he is “disappointed” at the ruling, the university will now pursue the issue in the federal courts. A federal court, where the university had first presented its case, had instructed it to submit the gun ban first to the adjudication of state courts, and to notify the federal court once that litigation had run its course.
“We are primarily concerned, as we have been from Day 1, with how to keep our students safe,” Mr. Young said in an interview.
In the case’s first full hearing, a Utah district court held that the university’s firearms policy did not contradict state law, but the attorney general appealed. Around the same time, the Utah Legislature passed a bill that said a local or state entity may not enforce a policy related to firearms unless specifically authorized by a state statute.
The passage of that law “dramatically altered the legal landscape, rendering it clear that Utah’s firearms statutes are universally applicable, rather than merely criminal in nature, as the district court had concluded, and that the university’s firearms policy does, in fact, violate Utah law,” according to the Supreme Court ruling, which was written by Justice Jill N. Parrish.
Chief Justice Christine M. Durham dissented. “The university’s academic interests must be weighed against individual constitutional rights where these rights are properly invoked,” Justice Durham wrote. “A policy that prohibited students and employees from openly brandishing firearms in classrooms would clearly be legitimate.”
Mr. Young said that if the gun ban were removed, an environment of intimidation could result, keeping people from speaking out in the classroom. The university, he said, deals with many young people of “varying degrees of maturity” who may not be familiar with the pressures of academic life.
“The moment somebody pulls a six-shooter out, it will have a chilling effect,” Mr. Young said.
The university must also consider the “potentially higher-charged situations” of sporting events or medical care, he said. While the university does not make those venues a higher priority than academic settings, he said, administrators have “a real passion to protect the people on our campus.”
Background articles from The Chronicle:
