Judge Kasey Wright deserves more credit than ridicule for refusing to pretend that chronic triage is competent judging.
On July 13, 2026, Utah Fourth Judicial District Judge Kasey Wright submitted his letter of resignation. A copy of the text of Judge Wright’s full resignation letter appears at the end of this post.
Many are mocking Judge Kasey Wright for leaving the bench. Calling him weak. Saying 50- or 60-hour workweeks come with the robe. Pointing out that Utah district court judges are paid more than $200,000 per year. Asking why someone earning that much deserves sympathy when business owners, physicians, lawyers, tradespeople, and working parents routinely put in long hours for less money and less prestige.
Those are not frivolous questions when posed sincerely, but now ask the questions that really matter here:
Do you want the most consequential decision of your life made during hour 58?
Do you want an exhausted judicial officer deciding whether you abused your spouse? Whether your children should be taken from you? Whether you must pay support you cannot afford or receive less support than you and the children deserve? Whether a disputed allegation becomes a judicial finding that follows you for years?
You do not want an overworked pilot flying your plane. You do not want an exhausted surgeon operating on you. And you should not want an overworked judge or domestic relations commissioner deciding your family’s future.
The point is not that judicial officers deserve our pity.
The point is that litigants deserve judicial officers who have had enough time to think.
Judge Wright did not ask to be pitied
Judge Wright was appointed to Utah’s Fourth District Court in October 2024. He submitted his resignation in July 2026, effective December 31. His letter does not expressly say, “I am resigning because the workload became unbearable.” News reports draw that conclusion more confidently than the letter itself does. We should not put words in his mouth.
But the most natural inference is difficult to miss.
Wright described judges carrying more than a thousand cases and working 50 to 60 hours per week. He said they must choose between giving cases the attention they deserve and sacrificing their personal time and family lives. He called the arrangement unsustainable and warned that burnout would eventually damage the quality of judging and the quality of those willing to become judges.
And he resigned.
It is fair to infer that Wright concluded he could not continue doing the job as conscientiously as he believed it should be done without asking too much of himself and his family. There is no shame in that. Indeed, there is something honorable about refusing to pretend.
Wright could have stayed. He could have continued collecting the salary, wearing the robe, and enjoying the title while gradually adjusting his definition of adequate performance to fit the hours available.
He could have skimmed more and read less.
He could have shortened hearings that needed more time.
He could have relied more heavily on attorney proffers, commissioners, guardians ad litem, evaluators, and whichever side presented the cleaner narrative.
He could have signed orders that resolved the calendar entry without truly resolving the dispute.
The system might have called that efficiency. The families before him would have experienced it as shallow justice.
Better that Wright leave than remain and fake his way through the work.
Staying is not always the more honorable choice
We have a sentimental attachment to endurance.
The person who stays is loyal. The person who leaves is weak. The judge who sacrifices evenings, weekends, health, and family life is dedicated. The judge who decides that the price has become unreasonable lacks commitment. That is childish thinking.
A judge’s duty is not to prove how much damage he and his family can absorb. His duty is to decide cases competently, fairly, and honestly.
Public service does not create an unlimited claim on a public servant’s life.
Nor does accepting a large salary obligate a judge to pretend that fatigue does not affect judgment. Paying someone more than $200,000 does not purchase a second brain, a 30-hour day, or immunity from exhaustion.
There would be grounds to criticize Wright if he had misunderstood an ordinary and foreseeable workload, accepted the appointment casually, or treated the office as something he could try for a while and discard when it became inconvenient.
His letter suggests something more serious. It suggests that he learned what conscientious judging actually demanded under existing conditions and decided the personal cost was not sustainable.
His departure will inconvenience the judiciary. It will transfer work to colleagues who already have too much of it. Utah must now recruit, vet, appoint, confirm, and train a replacement. The state has formally opened the vacancy created by his December 31 departure.
That does not make remaining indefinitely the moral choice.
A pilot who realizes that exhaustion has made him unsafe should not keep flying because canceling the flight inconveniences the airline.
The workload is not imaginary
Wright’s warning is not merely one man complaining that his job felt difficult.
A system operating in excess of capacity does not preserve 100% quality merely because its people are conscientious. Something gives.
Sometimes it is the judicial officer’s health. Sometimes it is the judicial officer’s marriage or relationship with his children. Sometimes it is the speed of decision-making. Sometimes it is the depth of preparation. Sometimes it is the patience required to hear an argument fully. Sometimes it is the clarity of the resulting order. Sometimes it is the quality of the judgment itself. There is no fifth option in which arithmetic politely suspends itself because everyone works hard.
Wright is too generous to the judiciary
Wright writes that judges confronted with excessive workloads are choosing to sacrifice their personal lives rather than deny cases the attention they deserve.
That is probably true of some judges. It cannot be true of every judge, in every case, indefinitely.
Judges are human beings. They do not possess equal ability, diligence, judgment, patience, courage, or humility. Some are excellent. Some are adequate. Some are not good enough.
Some read carefully, ask hard questions, and resist the easy narrative. Others rely too heavily on first impressions, attorney proffer, professional recommendations, or the assumption that the truth must lie somewhere in the middle.
Some recognize when they do not understand something. Others conceal uncertainty with decisiveness.
Some issue careful findings. Others issue orders so vague, incomplete, or disconnected from the evidence that the parties are left fighting over what the court supposedly decided.
Excessive workload explains some poor judging. It does not excuse it.
Wright’s statement that there is no better group of judges in the nation is gracious farewell language. It is not analysis. No bench is beyond criticism, and a judicial appointment does not transform ordinary human beings into uniformly exceptional thinkers.
The danger of overwork is not merely that it turns good judges into bad ones. It magnifies every judicial officer’s weaknesses while depriving even the best of the time required to do their best work.
In Utah family law, commissioners are not a footnote
Any discussion of Utah family law that focuses only on judges misses where much of the actual decision-making occurs.
In Utah’s First, Second, Third, and Fourth Judicial Districts, domestic relations commissioners hear most matters in divorce, child custody, and other family-law cases. They review filings, hold hearings, receive evidence, conduct conferences, and make recommendations.
For many families, the commissioner is the judicial officer who first decides on a temporary basis the issues that matter most immediately.
Yes, a dissatisfied party may object to a commissioner’s decisions under Rule 108. The objection is decided by a district court judge. But that requires another filing, another memorandum, usually more attorney fees, more delay, and sometimes another hearing. “You can ask an overworked judge to correct the overworked commissioner” is not a quality-control system worthy of the stakes.
Judges and commissioners are not interchangeable. Their authority and procedural roles differ. But from the litigant’s perspective, both exercise enormous power, and both need enough time to understand what they are deciding.
What happens when overburdened judicial officers do not leave?
This is the question Judge Wright’s resignation should force us to ask.
Some (very few) judges and commissioners leave.
Some stay and continue sacrificing their nights, weekends, health, and family lives.
Some adapt. They read faster. They hear less. They delegate more. They begin treating proffer as a substitute for evidence, professional credentials as a substitute for reasoning, and moving the calendar as a substitute for deciding correctly.
Most surely do some combination of all three.
Not every shortcut is dishonest. Triage is unavoidable in any overloaded system. But chronic triage changes professional standards. What began as an emergency accommodation becomes normal practice. “This is all the time we have” quietly becomes “this is all the case deserves.” Eventually, people stop recognizing the difference between processing a case and judging it. That is how judicial make-believe becomes institutional culture.
Judge Wright’s resignation is not the scandal
Judge Wright’s resignation is inconvenient. It may worsen the shortage temporarily. It is fair to wish that an intelligent and conscientious judge could have remained longer.
But his departure is not the scandal.
The scandal is that Utah increasingly depends upon judges and domestic relations commissioners choosing between two unacceptable alternatives: Sacrifice themselves and their families to preserve the quality of their work. Or preserve themselves by lowering the quality of justice.
Wright apparently declined both choices. He quit.
That is more honorable than staying until exhaustion dulled his judgment, resentment hardened his temperament, or chronic triage became so familiar that he no longer recognized it as a compromise.
Better to admit that the job is asking too much than to remain, wear the robe, collect the salary, and pretend that getting through the calendar is the same as getting the cases right.
Utah cannot require martyrdom from conscientious judges and commissioners.
It should not accept make-believe justice from those who survive by lowering the standard.
Judge Wright chose to leave rather than normalize what he believed was unsustainable. The rest of us still have to live under the orders the system produces.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Fourth District Court
Judge Kasey L. Wright
July 13, 2026
Chief Justice Matthew B. Durrant
Utah Supreme Court
450 South State Street
P.O. Box 1860
Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-1860
Re: Resignation of Judge Kasey L. Wright
Dear Chief Justice Durrant:
It is with gratitude, deep reflection, and sincere respect that I submit my resignation as a judge of Utah’s Fourth District Court, effective December 31, 2026.
Serving the people of the State of Utah has been one of the greatest honors of my life. Throughout my career as an attorney and now as a judge, I have believed and do believe that the rule of law is the lynchpin to freedom in this great nation. To have been entrusted with the responsibility of applying the law in deciding disputes, protecting constitutional rights, and administering justice on behalf of the citizens of Utah has been both a privilege and a humbling responsibility. I will always be grateful for the confidence placed in me and for the opportunity to serve.
I cannot step away from my position without expressing my profound concern for the challenges facing our justice system in Utah. Every case that comes before a district court judge impacts an individual on a deep personal level. Furthermore, each court ruling is a test of the seminal principle of equality under the law. Judges have the enormous task of doing their utmost to apply the law in all cases regardless of opinion or bias. This doesn’t mean judges always get it exactly right. It does mean that each judge shall do all in her/his power to equitably apply the law. To do this, judges must 1) understand the facts of each case, which are often intricate and almost always unique, 2) understand the law relevant to a particular dispute, 3) reflect and consider how the law applies to the facts, and 4) clearly explain their decision. Failure to accomplish any of these four tasks results in an incorrect ruling and/or a loss of confidence in the justice system.
The problem is that it takes time to properly perform each of these tasks, and it is time that too many judges are lacking. With many judges carrying a case load of well over a thousand cases, too often judges must choose between giving a case the full attention it deserves and sacrificing their personal time and family life to ensure a case is given the time it requires. To their credit and more importantly to the integrity of our justice system, judges are choosing the latter. The result is that judges are not only dealing with emotionally and intellectually taxing issues, they are working fifty to sixty-hour weeks.² This is not sustainable! Judges will burn out quickly and the quality of judicial applicants will decline. Accomplished and talented attorneys will be reluctant to seek judicial positions at the expense of their personal well-being. Whether it be from burn out or dilution of judicial applicants, justice suffers.
The challenge is likely to become even greater. Utah has experienced extraordinary population growth over the past two decades while judicial resources have expanded only modestly. Without more judicial support, it is difficult to envision judicial capacity keeping pace with continued population growth and increasing litigation. As caseloads rise without corresponding judicial resources, judges face increasing pressure to decide more cases with less time.
That should concern every citizen.
The question is not whether Utah’s judges are willing to work extraordinary hours. They are. The question is whether justice should depend upon extraordinary personal sacrifice simply to provide the level of preparation the public has every right to expect. I do not believe it should.
I leave the bench with profound gratitude and enduring confidence in the people who continue this important work. A special recognition to my colleagues in the Fourth District bench. They are competent, dedicated, and kind jurists and people. From my perspective, there is not a better group of judges in the nation.
My hope is that the observations in this letter will be received not as criticism, but as a plea for the resources necessary to uphold a justice system that is paramount to the survival of this republic of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Respectfully,
—signature—
JUDGE KASEY L. WRIGHT
Fourth District Court Judge
² The high work hours are not limited to newer judges. Experienced judges with over a decade of experience are putting in these types of hours to keep up with case demand.