Salt Lake City Corp. v. Haik, 466 P.3d 178

The Pearl Raty Trust owns an undeveloped lot in the Albion Basin subdivision in Little Cottonwood Canyon; the lot is outside Salt Lake City municipal limits but lies within Salt Lake City’s approved water-service area.
Salt Lake City obtained State Engineer approval to divert water to serve up to thirty-five homes in the Basin, but the City currently supplies insufficient water to develop the Trust’s lot and lacks distribution infrastructure to reach it.
The Trust counterclaimed in a quiet-title action, arguing that article XI, section 6 of the Utah Constitution requires a municipality to supply water to its “inhabitants,” and that owners of property within a city’s water-service area qualify as such inhabitants.
The district court dismissed the Trust’s inhabitant-based claim; the Utah Court of Appeals affirmed that “inhabitant” means persons residing within a city’s corporate boundaries.
The Utah Supreme Court granted certiorari and affirmed, holding that the ordinary and ratification-era public meaning of “inhabitants” refers to persons residing within a municipality (or counted in its official population), not mere property owners in a municipal water-service area; the Court declined to decide whether article XI, § 6 imposes an affirmative, self-executing duty on cities to supply water.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether article XI, § 6’s mandate to preserve and operate municipal waterworks to supply “its inhabitants with water” includes owners of property located in a city’s approved water-service area but outside municipal limits	Trust: “Inhabitants” means persons (or property) within a city’s water-service area, so the Trust’s lot is entitled to municipal water	City: “Inhabitants” refers to persons domiciled or residing within the city’s corporate boundaries (or counted in its official population); water-service area ownership is insufficient	The word “inhabitants” in article XI, § 6 refers to those residing within a municipality’s corporate boundaries or whom the municipality counts among its population; the Trust is not an inhabitant and has no such constitutional entitlement under that term

Haik v. Salt Lake City Corp., 393 P.3d 285 (Utah 2017) (prior litigation in the same ongoing dispute involving water access and res judicata rulings)
Richards v. Cox, 450 P.3d 1074 (Utah 2019) (articulating original-public-meaning approach to constitutional interpretation)
Grand County v. Emery County, 52 P.3d 1148 (Utah 2002) (text-first rule: interpret constitutional text by its plain language and structure)
S. Salt Lake City v. Maese, 450 P.3d 1092 (Utah 2019) (use of constitutional drafting record and contemporaneous sources in interpretation)
Bechtel v. Bechtel, 112 N.W. 883 (Minn. 1907) (late-19th/early-20th-century authority treating “inhabitant” as one with an established residence)
Borland v. City of Boston, 132 Mass. 89 (Mass. 1882) (discussing domicile/inhabitancy and municipal relations)