Cara Brown McCormick
A Utah state judge has struck down the congressional map drawn by Republican lawmakers, ruling that it violates the state’s voter-approved ban on partisan gerrymandering and ordering new district lines for the 2026 elections.
Third District Judge Dianna Gibson ruled November 10 that both the GOP-controlled legislature’s plan, known as Map C, and the companion law, SB 1011, failed to comply with Proposition 4, the Better Boundaries initiative passed by voters in 2018 to require neutral redistricting standards. Proposition 4 passed with 512,218 votes, representing 50.34% of the total.
The Judge was unflinching in her order:
In 2018, Utahns exercised their fundamental constitutional right to alter or reform their government via an initiative that, among other things, banned partisan gerrymandering,” Gibson wrote. “S.B. 1011 unconstitutionally impairs Proposition 4’s reforms in violation of Article I, Section 2 of the Utah Constitution.”
Gibson found that the law “effectively mandates the very partisan favoritism that Proposition 4 was enacted to stop,” and that “the evidence shows that the partisan bias test directly contravenes Proposition 4’s neutral redistricting criteria. It fails maps that perform best on those criteria and passes maps that perform worst on them.”
She added that “Map C does not comply with Utah law,” and that “Map C creates four districts in which zero Democratic statewide candidates have prevailed under the assessed elections.”
According to the ruling, expert analysis showed that the Legislature’s map was “an extreme partisan outlier, more Republican than over 99 percent of expected maps drawn without political considerations.”
To understand the controversy surrounding Utah’s congressional map, it is essential to clarify that all four U.S. House seats in the state are held by Republicans, despite the largest population center, Salt Lake City (home to a third of the state’s electorate), leaning Democratic.
To remedy the violation, Judge Gibson adopted Plaintiffs’ Map 1, a proposal submitted by the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government. “The public has an interest in proceeding with a congressional map in the 2026 election that complies with Proposition 4, not one that undermines the core reforms,” Gibson wrote.
The Court approves Plaintiffs’ Map 1 as the judicial remedy and orders that Map 1 be implemented for use in Utah’s congressional elections.”
The new map creates a Democratic leaning district centered in northern Salt Lake County, the first such district in Utah in roughly 25 years.
Republican leaders called the decision judicial overreach and said they will appeal to the Utah Supreme Court. Voting rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers praised the ruling as a victory for fair elections and voter-approved reforms.
Lawmakers have repeatedly tried to weaken the independent commission – including passing a bill that effectively repealed and replaced it, but the Utah Supreme Court ruled that they cannot do that to a citizen initiative that reforms government.
Unless overturned on appeal, Utah’s 2026 congressional elections will proceed under the court-ordered map by Gibson on November 10.