SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Utah Legislature will need to rapidly redraw the state’s congressional boundaries after a judge ruled Monday that the Republican-controlled body circumvented safeguards put in place by voters to ensure districts aren’t drawn to favor any party.
The current map, adopted in 2021, divides Salt Lake County — Utah’s population center and a Democratic stronghold — among the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins.
District Court Judge Dianna Gibson made few judgments on the content of the map but declared it unlawful because lawmakers had weakened and ignored an independent commission established by voters to prevent partisan gerrymandering.
“The nature of the violation lies in the Legislature’s refusal to respect the people’s exercise of their constitutional lawmaking power and to honor the people’s right to reform their government,” Gibson said in the ruling.
New maps will need to be drawn quickly, before candidates start filing in early January for the 2026 midterm elections. The ruling gives lawmakers a deadline of Sept. 24 and allows voting rights groups involved in the legal challenge to submit alternate proposals to the court.
But appeals expected from Republican officials could help them run out the clock to possibly delay adopting new maps until 2028.
Redistricting battle could shift the balance in Congress
The ruling creates uncertainty in a state that was thought to be a clean sweep for the GOP as the party is preparing to defend its slim majority in the U.S. House. Nationally, Democrats need to net three seats next year to take control of the chamber. The sitting president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterms, as was the case for President Donald Trump in 2018.
Trump has urged several Republican-led states to add winnable seats for the GOP. In Texas, a plan awaiting Gov. Greg Abbott’s approval includes five new districts that would favor Republicans. Ohio Republicans already were scheduled to revise their maps to make them more partisan, and Indiana, Florida and Missouri may choose to make changes. Some Democrat-led states say they may enter the redistricting arms race, but so far only California has taken action to offset GOP gains in Texas.
The U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to intervene, and the Utah Supreme Court may be hesitant to entertain an appeal of Monday’s ruling after it had sent the case back to Gibson for her to decide.
The nation’s high court in 2019 ruled that claims of partisan gerrymandering for congressional and legislative districts are outside the purview of federal courts and should be decided by states.
Voting rights groups celebrate legal victory
David Reymann, an attorney for the voting rights advocates who challenged the map, called the ruling a “watershed moment” for the voices of Utah voters.
“The Legislature in this state is not king,” Reymann told reporters Monday evening.
Leaders from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee applauded the ruling as a victory for democracy.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said he disagrees with the decision but holds respect for Utah’s judiciary. Meanwhile, the state’s GOP Chairman, Robert Axson, dismissed the ruling as “judicial activism.”
Utah’s Republican legislative leaders, Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz, said in a joint statement that they are disappointed by the ruling and are carefully considering their next steps.
In 2018, voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative that created an independent redistricting commission to draw boundaries for Utah’s legislative and congressional districts, which the Legislature was required to consider. Lawmakers repealed the initiative in 2020 and replaced it with a law that transformed the commission into an advisory board that they could choose to ignore.
The following year, lawmakers disregarded a congressional map proposal from the commission and drew one of their own that carved up Salt Lake County among four reliably Republican districts.
Voting rights advocates sued, arguing the map drawn by lawmakers constituted partisan gerrymandering that favored Republicans. They also said the Legislature violated the rights of voters when it repealed and replaced the 2018 initiative.
The case made its way to the Utah Supreme Court, which ruled that the Legislature cannot change laws approved through ballot initiatives except to reinforce them, or to advance a compelling government interest. The five-member panel sent the case back to Gibson in the lower court to decide whether lawmakers would have to redraw boundaries set as part of a redistricting process that happens every 10 years.
Lawmakers and voters clash over redistricting
The ruling Monday reinstates the voter-approved redistricting standards that lawmakers had overturned.
Utah was one of four states where voters approved measures designed to reduce partisan gerrymandering in 2018. As in Utah, Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature quickly sought to repeal key provisions. Missouri voters approved the Legislature’s revisions in 2020, before the original plan was ever used. Independent commissions approved by Colorado and Michigan voters remained in place and were used after the 2020 census.
The redistricting measures aren’t the only instances where state lawmakers have altered voter-approved measures.
Earlier this year, Missouri lawmakers repealed a paid sick leave law passed by voters and referred a proposed repeal of an abortion rights amendment to the ballot. In South Dakota, voters approved a public campaign finance system, tightened lobbying laws and created an ethics commission in 2016. Lawmakers repealed and replaced the measure the next year with a narrower government watchdog board and looser limits on lobbyist gifts to public officials.
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Associated Press writer David Lieb contributed from Jefferson City, Missouri.
