Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton, said Wednesday he believes it is important that the federal government and even the president be put on notice if there is a regulation that creates an unnecessary, burdensome and yes, even illegal hoop for the state of Utah to jump through.

To that end, he is sponsoring SB57, or the Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act, which was heard in a Senate committee and advance to the full floor for additional consideration.

The bill is simple. If there is a law, rule, regulation or even presidential act that creates consternation amongst a lawmaker, he or she can go to the Utah House speaker and the Senate president to get their permission to craft a concurrent resolution. From there, the resolution would have to pass both houses by a majority and get the governor’s buy-in as well.

Sandall told members of the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee that the measure would signal to the federal government that Utah is not going to comply until the issue has been settled in the courts.

He pointed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ozone transport rule, which Utah and other states sued over, as an example. The courts agreed the rule was problematic, but Sandall said in the interim, regulators and industries had spent millions of dollars trying to meet the rule’s requirements.

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“This simply creates the process by where we can openly as a legislature with the governor’s concurring support, say this went too far. This simply went too far. And in that regard, this bill, in my opinion, is not based on politics. It’s based on the sovereignty of our state, and that the framers of the Constitution intended to be a balance between the state and the federal government,” Sandall said. “And this is a process whereby when that balance gets out of whack, that we can as a state say, ‘No. We’re going to tip the scales in this one instance.’ And that is one instance at a time, basically, by resolution. No other state that I know of in the nation has tried this approach.”

Jen Brown, president of the Utah Citizens for the Constitution, said she can think of numerous examples in Utah where this law could be useful, including the debt, inflation, educational issues and border security.

“We think it is appropriate to have this tool to balance the federal government,” Brown said.