A Utah district judge has ruled that the state must redraw its congressional districts because the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature erred when it overruled a ballot measure passed by voters that sought to rein in partisan gerrymandering.
The ruling adds yet another wrinkle to the national battle for control of Congress next year — and how the congressional map is evolving ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Republicans are defending a narrow lead in the U.S. House, and Texas Republicans, urged on by President Donald Trump, embarked on a rare mid-decade effort to redraw the state's lines in hope of netting up to five more congressional seats for the GOP.
That has lit a match that has a handful of other states considering redrawing their own lines. Last week, in response to Texas, California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature passed its own plan to ask voters to temporarily redraw lines to create up to five new Democratic-leaning seats there. And Republican and Democratic leaders in other states have mused about following suit.
At issue in Utah is a long-running court battle over the 2018 ballot proposition that created an independent redistricting commission to recommend congressional maps. And it’s unclear whether that fight will be resolved and whether Utah will have new maps for the midterms.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported Monday that the Legislature’s attorneys have said they could appeal a ruling to state courts or even the U.S. Supreme Court.
Under the terms of the 2018 ballot measure, the Legislature was required to either approve or disapprove those maps, and voters approved guardrails for how new districts should be drawn. One of those was a ban on partisan gerrymandering.
In 2020, the Legislature responded by passing a law that softened the partisan redistricting ban and removed the requirement that legislators vote on the independent commission's map, among other things.
In her 76-page ruling, Judge Dianna M. Gibson wrote that the Legislature "intentionally stripped away" the heart of the 2018 reform passed by voters when it passed its own legislation just a few years later.
"Redistricting is not a mere exercise in political line-drawing; it strikes at the very heart of our democracy," she wrote.
"The way district boundaries are drawn determines whether the right to vote is meaningful, whether equal protection is honored, and whether the fundamental promises of our state and federal constitutions are upheld," Gibson continued. "How district lines are drawn can either safeguard representation and ensure accountability by elected representatives or erode public trust, silence voices and weaken the rule of law."
Finding that the Legislature "unconstitutionally repealed" the ballot measure, Gibson barred the state from moving forward with future elections under its current congressional district lines. And she directed the Legislature to create a remedial map within 30 days that follows the guidelines voters passed in 2018.
Utah, a heavily Republican state, backed President Donald Trump by more than 20 points, 58%-37%, in the last election. The state's House delegation is made up of four Republicans.
But its biggest population center — Salt Lake County, which accounts for more than one-third of Utah's population — leans Democratic. The county backed Vice President Kamala Harris by 10 points last year. The current congressional map divides it among four districts that fan out across the rest of the state's Republican strongholds.
