The Capitol in Salt Lake City is pictured on Thursday, July 10, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The dust is far from settled after a Utah judge issued a ruling Monday ordering the Utah Legislature to draw a new congressional map after determining lawmakers unconstitutionally undid a 2018 voter-approved ballot initiative that created an independent redistricting commission.
The lawsuit’s plaintiffs, anti-gerrymandering groups, including Better Boundaries, and Democrats celebrated the ruling as a “watershed moment” that could potentially make at least one of Utah’s four U.S. House seats competitive for Democrats for the first time in years.
But Utah Republicans reacted to the ruling with defiance and accusations of “judicial activism.”
“Once again, certain members of Utah’s judiciary abandon the principles of our Constitutional Republic,” Utah Republican Party Chairman Rob Axson said in a statement posted on social media. “Using earlier flawed rulings to justify their opinions over the principles of our founding is a special kind of hubris — Judicial Activism in Action!”
Meanwhile, one of Utah’s U.S. senators, Sen. Mike Lee, posted a lengthy thread on X criticizing the ruling and urging lawmakers to act.
“This is a great day for Utah’s Democrats — who haven’t controlled the Utah legislature in many, many decades (because most Utah voters don’t like what the Democratic Party is selling), and have found a clever way to even the score by enlisting the help of their judicial allies,” Lee wrote. “But it’s a terrible day for everyone else — and for the rule of law(.)”
In 2018, Utah voters narrowly approved the Better Boundaries’ voter initiative, Proposition 4, which sought to create an independent redistricting commission that would adhere to specific standards and requirements meant to discourage gerrymandering.
Third District Court Judge Dianna Gibson ruled this week that the Utah Legislature’s repeal and replacement of Proposition 4 with SB200— a law that made the independent recommission purely an advisory body that Utah’s GOP-controlled Legislature could ultimately ignore — was unconstitutional. To remedy that, she ruled SB200 and its resulting congressional map unconstitutional and ordered the Utah Legislature to draw a new map by Sept. 24, in time to meet a Nov. 1 deadline for the new map to be used for the 2026 elections.
Lee, however, argued Utah’s ruling was “yet another example of how ‘independent commissions’ are often used to give the left an unfair, unearned advantage in red states — one they could never otherwise secure.”
“If you find this manipulation of the judicial system appalling, contact your state legislators today, tell them how you feel about the ruling, and encourage them to act quickly and aggressively to fix this problem, even by means of a constitutional amendment if necessary,” Lee posted to his more than 609,000 X followers.
What will Utah lawmakers do now?
It’s too early to say what the Utah Legislature’s Republican supermajority may do in response to the court ruling and in preparation for a special session expected in September. But on social media, some Republican lawmakers were quick to disparage Gibson’s decision.
Sen. Dan. McCay, R-Riverton, even questioned whether Gibson could be removed from the bench.
“Judge Gibson took 76 single spaced pages to justify ignoring plain language of the Utah Constitution,” McCay said, referencing a section of the Utah Constitution that states the Legislature “shall divide the state into congressional, legislative, and other districts accordingly.”
“Could Judge Gibson be the first judicial removal for ignoring the Utah Constitution that she took an oath to uphold?” McCay wrote.
Under Utah law, elected officials and judges can only be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors or malfeasance in office.” Any impeachment proceedings would also be required to start in the House. A House spokesperson told Utah News Dispatch on Tuesday that she wasn’t aware of any House members exploring impeachment of any judges.
In her ruling, Gibson acknowledged that section of the Utah Constitution — but she also noted that “in accordance with long-standing Utah law, this provision limits the Legislature’s authority,” specifically when redistricting shall occur. She also wrote that provision’s reference “to the term ‘Legislature’ does not exclude the legislative power of the people.”
“Article IX, section 1 does not include any limiting terms such as ‘exclusive’ or ‘sole’ to support an intent to exclude the people’s co-equal legislative power under this provision, unlike other Utah Constitutional provisions that do make clear when authority is exclusively granted to a particular body,” Gibson wrote.
Utah’s top Republican legislative leaders, House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, issued a joint statement Monday expressing disappointment in the ruling, but that they “remain committed to protecting the voices of Utahns and upholding the Legislature’s state and federal constitutional authority to draw congressional districts.”
“We will carefully review the ruling and consider our next steps,” Adams and Schultz said.
It’s not yet clear exactly what Utah lawmakers could do to resist or sidestep the ruling, but Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Millcreek, told Utah News Dispatch he’s worried there’s more to come, both in the courts and in the legislative arena.
“Knowing the power that the Legislature has and the stance that my (Republican) colleagues up there are going to take on this, I know there’s going to be a tooth-and-nail fight to prolong the litigation and keep kicking decisions down the road in hopes that they can push this past 2026,” Blouin said.
Though Gibson’s ruling lays out a clear process with a deadline for lawmakers to draw a new map by Sept. 24, Blouin said lawmakers “time and again find ways to squirrel their way out of things that they don’t like.”
State attorneys have indicated that if Gibson didn’t rule in the Legislature’s favor, they’d appeal to the Utah Supreme Court and possibly the U.S. Supreme Court. Blouin also questioned whether Utah lawmakers could try to ignore the ruling and use a congressional map that’s been deemed unconstitutional anyway.
He pointed to what’s happened in Ohio, where congressional maps have been redrawn and approved twice over the last five years by Ohio leaders, but neither of the maps received the bipartisan support the state constitution requires to allow the maps to be used for 10 years. Additionally, both of Ohio’s maps were deemed unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court, but that didn’t stop Republican leaders there from leaving the most recently approved map in place and using it for the last election cycle.
Blouin said he’s “cautiously optimistic” Utah will get a new congressional map for 2026, but he’s also worried there’s a potential that could get delayed until 2028.
It’s also possible the Utah Legislature could try to repeal and replace Proposition 4 again — but with a law that they believe would meet a “compelling government interest” to survive a constitutional challenge before the Utah Supreme Court. But it remains to be seen whether lawmakers take that route — or another.
With Gibson’s ruling, however, Blouin expects Republicans on Utah’s Capitol Hill will continue to clash with the judiciary like they did earlier this year when they considered a slate of bills that legal professionals worried would upset the balance of power between the legislative and judicial branches.
“It’s going to get tense up there,” Blouin said. “This is a foundational decision that, in a lot of ways, kind of rewrites the narrative here in Utah, and (Republicans) are not going to let that pass without an extreme fight.”
Given the national debate over redistricting, Gibson’s ruling will also likely put Utah in the spotlight and perhaps even draw the attention of President Donald Trump, who has been pushing for states to bolster the U.S. House’s slim GOP majority in the 2026 midterm elections.
‘Work with us’
David Reymann, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the anti-gerrymandering lawsuit against Utah, told Utah News Dispatch he’s expecting the state’s defense team to try to delay or dispute Gibson’s ruling in any way they can.
However, he said that shouldn’t stop lawmakers from adhering to Proposition 4, at least in the meantime, since Gibson’s ruling clearly made that law of the land.
“The district court has outlined what we feel is a very reasonable and fair process to get a legal map in place by the 2026 election cycle, and we hope the Legislature will work with us to make that happen,” Reymann said.
“If they want the Utah Supreme Court to review it, they will have their day to do that,” he added. “But there is no reason to make the people of Utah go through another election cycle with a map that has been declared unlawful.”
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