Legislature says a new independent commission needs to draw maps, but plaintiffs say it’s a delay tactic.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Emma Petty Addams speaks at a news conference in Salt Lake City on Monday, Aug. 25, 2025. A judge earlier ruled that the Legislature will have 30 days to adopt new maps that comply with the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative guidelines.
Lawyers for Utahns challenging the state’s congressional boundaries say there is “jarring irony” in the Legislature’s insistence on the recreation of an independent redistricting commission to aid in drawing four new districts to maps to comply with the law.
“More than five years after defying the will of the voters and gutting every meaningful part of Proposition 4,” attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote in a Utah Supreme Court brief Tuesday evening, “it is the Legislature that wants to be its newfound champion, claiming Utah voters must abide yet another election cycle under an unlawful map because there just isn’t enough time to pay adequate fidelity to Proposition 4.”
It marks the third time that the justices have been asked to rule in the yearslong fight over Utah’s congressional districts.
Proposition 4, also known as the Better Boundaries initiative, was passed by voters in 2018 and sought to create an independent redistricting commission and certain standards for drawing the state’s political boundaries — including banning partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing maps that benefit one party to the detriment of the other.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature violated the Utah Constitution when it repealed Proposition 4. And two weeks ago, based on that ruling, Judge Dianna Gibson voided the state’s current congressional maps, setting a tight timeline to draw new boundaries that abide by Proposition 4 ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
On Friday, the Legislature’s attorneys filed an emergency petition asking the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that, to truly comply with Proposition 4, a new independent commission would have to be established and draw new maps.
“The people of Utah can have new congressional maps in place for the 2026 congressional elections. Or they can have new congressional maps resulting from a process that follows all of Proposition 4,” the legislative lawyers wrote. “But given the election calendar, Utahns cannot have both.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs — the League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and several individual voters who contend the maps Gibson voided deprived them of fair representation in Congress — scoffed at that notion.
“There is no ‘emergency’ simply because the Legislature does not want to do the work voters demanded and that it should have done five years ago,” they wrote.
Proposition 4, the plaintiffs argued, only requires an independent commission to be formed in two circumstances — after the Census and if, for some reason, the number of Utah’s congressional districts changes.
In their initial brief, legislative lawyers asked the justices to decide no later than Sept. 15 whether to halt the map-drawing process. They have until Sept. 11 to respond to the plaintiff’s opposition brief.
Attorneys for the Legislature also said in their petition that they could challenge whether Gibson’s ruling disqualifying the current maps was wrong, rather than just challenging the process she put in place to redraw boundaries.
In the meantime, under the timeline Gibson set in motion, the Legislature has until Sept. 25 to produce a draft of a new congressional map to allow the public 10 days to comment on those drawings. Then, the Legislature will convene a special session Oct. 6 to adopt the final version.
That map will be submitted to the court, along with proposals from the plaintiffs, to determine if the new map complies with the requirements in the Better Boundaries initiative.
If the requirements in Proposition 4 are met, the map will be in effect for the 2026 congressional election. If it does not, the judge will have to decide on the next step, including potentially choosing one of the plaintiffs’ maps.
Utah’s redistricting fight comes amid a national battle over gerrymandering.
As Texas adopts a new congressional map, pushed for by President Donald Trump, in a bid to create five new Republican seats, California Democrats have retaliated by proposing a map that would offset the GOP gains. And additional states could potentially do the same as the parties claw for an advantage in a closely split U.S. House of Representatives ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.