You know the axiom: Perception is reality in politics. Whether something is based on fact or fiction, if people think you’re corrupt or if your overall image looks bad, it could be your downfall. For Utah Supreme Court Justice Diana Hagen, the lesson was learned the hard way, as she resigned from the bench following accusations of an improper relationship with an attorney who was involved in this case that led to a pro-Democrat congressional map getting approved (via Salt Lake Tribune):
Utah Supreme Court Justice Diana Hagen announces her resignation from the court Per Utah News Dispatch
— OSZ (@OpenSourceZone) May 8, 2026
Hagen voted in favor of the new Utah map that gave Democrats an extra seat
She faced allegations she had a relationship with an attorney involved in the Redistricting case pic.twitter.com/2uPLgzXyky
Utah News Dispatch: Utah Supreme Court Justice Diana Hagen announces her resignation from the court.
— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) May 8, 2026
Hagen faced allegations she had a relationship with an attorney involved in a case about redistricting, which led to Utah getting a new congressional map. pic.twitter.com/aFQI3Uw8Lf
Under intense pressure from Republican leaders, including Gov. Spencer Cox, Justice Diana Hagen resigned from the Utah Supreme Court on Friday.
Cox, along with House Speaker Mike Schultz and Senate President J. Stuart Adams announced an investigation last month into allegations that Hagen had an improper relationship with an attorney with a case before the high court — accusations that the Judicial Conduct Commission dismissed as “misleading.”
No details of how the investigation would be conducted had been announced.
But amid the cloud of the investigation — and the Utah Republican Party actively campaigning for Utahns to vote her off the bench in November’s retention election — Hagen submitted her resignation, “effective immediately,” to Cox, the governor said in a news release Friday.
In her resignation letter, Hagen wrote that she recognizes public service requires sacrifice and officials are held to a higher standard and “greater degree of public scrutiny and diminished privacy.”
“But my family and friends did not choose public life,” she wrote. “They do not deserve to have intensely personal details surrounding the painful dissolution of my thirty-year marriage subjected to public scrutiny.”
“I would love nothing more than to continue serving the people of Utah as a Supreme Court Justice,” she wrote, “but I cannot do so without sacrificing the privacy and well-being of those I care about and the effective functioning and independence of Utah’s judiciary.”
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So the Judge that authored the opinion forcing Utah to redraw their Congressional map (which added an absurd Democrat seat) just resigned after her ex-husband alleged she was having an affair with the plaintiffs attorney in the redistricting case that she presided over…. https://t.co/WA284lSQSn
— Caroline Wren (@CarolineWren) May 8, 2026
Hagen Letter of Resignation by Robert Gehrke
I mean, you could’ve done that, lady, if you weren’t sleeping around…allegedly.
Backstory: a local judge, Dianna Gibson, ordered new maps to be drawn after nullifying one created by the Republican legislature. The same judge then approved another map proposed by the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government, which the legislature appealed, claiming that Judge Gibson exceeded her authority. The Utah Supreme Court rejected the appeal in February, allowing this map to be used in the 2026 midterms. And now-former Utah Supreme Court Justice Diana Hagen voted in favor.
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