A Utah GOP dissident sued party leaders and lost. Now they want $92K and a leash on future lawsuits

Utah Republican Party leaders want a federal judge to make the plaintiffs in a sprawling federal “election conspiracy” lawsuit pay nearly $93,000 in legal fees—and ban them from filing future lawsuits without a judge's permission first.

The motion, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, calls the lawsuit brought by Tracie Halvorsen and a handful of other plaintiffs “procedural vandalism” and says it was designed to bleed unpaid party leaders financially. For anyone who has been following Halvorsen’s increasingly aggressive campaign against SB54, Utah’s hybrid ballot-access law, the motion reads less like a legal filing and more like an itemized bill for causing several years of political chaos.

SB54, passed in 2014, created the state’s dual-track to the primary ballot through either the traditional caucus-convention system, by collecting signatures or both. The law has enraged Republican Party hard-liners who want convention delegates to control nominations.

Halvorsen has been a persistent and polarizing presence in Utah Republican politics. She was part of the effort to undo Utah’s new state flag and was a central player in Phil Lyman’s numerous efforts to overturn his 2024 Utah gubernatorial election loss. She ran unsuccessfully for Salt Lake County GOP chair.

Last month, the Salt Lake County GOP banned Halvorsen from most party events through May 2030 after she accused party leaders of "illegal election interference" over a plan to endorse candidates in municipal elections and blasted out letters to city attorneys, the FBI and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

She’s now challenging Sen. Dan McCay for the GOP nomination in Senate District 18.

The Lawsuit

In November, Halvorsen fronted a massive federal lawsuit to oust Gov. Spencer Cox, Sen. John Curtis and Attorney General Derek Brown from office and replace them with the candidates who won the delegate vote at the Republican convention—a theory that multiple courts had already rejected.

The lawsuit, which spawned Monday’s motion, alleged a vast racketeering and election fraud conspiracy, claiming that SB54 is illegal because Republican Party bylaws only allow the caucus/convention route and that giving candidates a “second chance” via signatures violates GOP rights. It accused Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson of manipulating election results by declaring signature-gathering candidates had won elections over convention-only rivals.

Halvorsen and her co-plaintiffs argued the law was unconstitutional and that Utah Republican Party leaders were violating their rights by refusing to help defy it.

The problem: those arguments had already been rejected by the Utah Supreme Court and the Tenth Circuit—decisions the plaintiffs themselves cited in their own complaint.

Judge Howard Nielson tossed the case in just three sentences, writing the plaintiffs' core legal theory was "plainly controlled" by those prior rulings.

Procedural Vandalism

The motion says the point wasn’t winning; it was trying to inflict costs on the Utah Republican Party defendants: Party Chair Rob Axson, Treasurer Chris Null and National Committeewoman Kim Coleman. Halvorsen even tried to block the Utah GOP from paying their lawyers. The trio, all unpaid volunteers, say they personally covered $92,843 for more than 150 hours of attorney time.

The filing quotes a Facebook post from Halvorsen when the complaint was filed, in which she wrote, "Can you imagine the amount of money each defendant will have to spend in order to defend themselves?. How much will an attorney cost to read a 20-pound complaint?"

As for the supposed civil rights violations, the complaint boils down to this:

Axson sent an email calling Halvorsen's legal theory "meritless"— ajudgment the court ultimately validated
Party leaders called police to remove Halvorsen from a September 2024 Republican Central Committee meeting after she refused to leave. That incident was itself connected to the Salt Lake County GOP disciplinary proceedings, where Halvorsen was separately found guilty of disruptive behavior at party meetings.

A pattern of frivolous litigation

The motion also lays out what the defendants call a coordinated pattern of frivolous lawsuits filed by Halvorsen and her father, Steven Huber.

The pair have collectively sued 20 different entities and individuals across three cases, including the U.S. government (twice), the State of Utah, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. District Court, two federal judges, three court clerks, the Utah Supreme Court chief justice, Utah’s governor and lieutenant governor, Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, two state senators, and four Bureau of Land Management employees.

One pending case involves a BLM land-access dispute in which Huber allegedly refused to pay a standard easement application fee. Instead, he filed a lawsuit in July 2025 alleging that the Department of the Interior and four BLM employees accusing them of robbery and extortion for denying him access across federal land for him to reach his property. The case is valued at $90 million.

Halvorsen referenced that lawsuit in written threats to Salt Lake County GOP leaders during the endorsement dispute last year, warning that BLM agents "are being sued individually and in their official capacities" and that "the attorney bills are over $100,000 and they have not even had a court hearing."

At a status conference in that lawsuit, Huber was upset when the judge would not let Halvorsen sit next to him and act as his legal counsel. She isn’t a licensed lawyer.

He then petitioned the Tenth Circuit to disqualify the judge and bar government lawyers from representing the individual defendants, presumably so they would have to bear the legal costs on their own. He also asked the court to enter an order allowing him to have whomever he chose—“including, but not limited to, his trusted daughter—sit beside him during any court proceedings.”

The Tenth Circuit quickly dismissed the petition; Huber responded by suing the clerk who entered the order. That case was later stayed by Chief Judge Jill Parrish during a government funding lapse.

In December, Huber filed yet another lawsuit, accusing judges, court clerks, and federal prosecutors in the first lawsuit of participating in a racketeering scheme to deny him his rights when they ruled against him in the first lawsuit and for staying the case. He also included multiple civil rights claims.

The Utah GOP defendants want two things: an order making all six plaintiffs pay the $92,843 in legal fees, and restrictions forcing Halvorsen and Huber to get the chief judge’s approval before filing any new federal case—a remedy the Tenth Circuit has previously approved for serial vexatious litigants.

The motion also notes that Halvorsen has threatened a fourth lawsuit, targeting Utah legislators for sponsoring HB260, a bill cracking down on the unauthorized practice of law, which she has allegedly engaged in across all three lawsuits.

“This fourth lawsuit, if filed, will once again inevitably be dismissed because of absolute legislative immunity, but it will be an expensive nuisance to the individuals Plaintiff Halvorsen sues, and to the state of Utah,” the filing warns. “Plaintiffs Halvorsen and Huber have an extensive history and established pattern of filing frivolous and abusive lawsuits against public servants, and they are actively threatening to do it again.”

The plaintiffs have not yet filed a response.