Salt Lake City v. International Association of Firefighters

In Salt Lake City v. International Association of Firefighters, 563 P.2d 786 (Utah 1977), the court held unconstitutional a statute that required disputes between firemen and municipal corporations regarding wages, hours, and other conditions of employment to be submitted to arbitration, where the arbitration process, as declared by the act, was final and binding on all matters in dispute except for salary and wage matters. The majority opinion noted that the arbitrators were private citizens with no responsibility to the public and that the act did not include a safeguard of judicial review and then proceeded to declare the Act an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority under Article VI, section 28. Id. at 789. Justice Crockett concurred separately, noting that for the legislature to "force arbitration upon the parties and to make it final and binding," forcing parties to proceed through a dispute resolution mechanism other than the courts for which there is no judicial review, "deprives an aggrieved party of access to the courts, contrary to the assurance of Section 11, Article I, the Open Courts Clause." Id. at 791.