A case before the Utah Supreme Court will determine whether judicial panels created under a new law to hear constitutional challenges will be allowed to decide much of the state’s high-profile litigation. The law establishing the panels, enacted just a few months after a Utah judge struck down the state’s gerrymandered congressional map, effectively gives litigants veto power over the assigned judge, a tool usable at any point in constitutional litigation.

When litigants file a transfer notice pursuant to the law, their case is moved from the assigned trial judge to a three-judge panel randomly selected from across Utah’s judicial districts. State officials quickly invoked the law in the congressional map case, as well as in pending cases over abortion access and environmental rights. The court will hear oral arguments over the law’s constitutionality in October.

Utah legislators are not alone in relocating constitutional review after a major defeat. In recent years, at least seven states have enacted laws altering venue rules, transferring jurisdiction, or creating new judgeships, judicial districts, or courts for constitutional challenges to state law. Several other states considered similar provisions last legislative session. While proponents point to politically neutral justifications for such laws, including having greater geographic diversity among the judges deciding cases with statewide impact, the timing of these efforts tells a different story: Most were enacted in response to legal setbacks for the state in litigation over abortion, public education, or voting rights—and state officials invoked the new laws in those very cases shortly thereafter.

As these laws proliferate, so too has litigation over their validity. Courts have generally invalidated these laws when they intrude on core judicial powers, are inconsistent with explicit provisions in state constitutions, or encourage procedural gamesmanship among litigants. However, where nothing in the state constitution expressly prohibits such laws and the laws neither violate separation of powers nor impede the administration of the judiciary, courts have been willing to uphold them. Multiple lawsuits are still pending.

Kentucky was among the first states to enact a law altering venue rules to reroute constitutional litigation away from judges who had previously issued major decisions against the state. After a multiyear effort to remove constitutional challenges from the dockets of circuit court judges in the state’s capital whom some state officials deemed to be too liberal, the........

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