The plaintiffs’ map split homes and left some voters in limbo. Legislative attorneys say it warrants returning to Utah’s current districts with four GOP seats.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Judge Dianna Gibson holds a hearing on Utah’s congressional maps process, in Salt Lake City on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025. Judge Gibson previously ruled — based on a decision last year by the Utah Supreme Court — that the Legislature had violated voters’ constitutional right to make laws when legislators repealed Proposition 4, the citizen-passed Better Boundaries initiative.
A home in Sandy divided in half, a severed condominium complex in Huntsville and homes in Utah County split apart — those are some of the issues in a court-designated congressional map that created confusion for state elections officers and prompted a ruling Friday seeking to clear up any questions.
Third District Judge Dianna Gibson did not, however, address arguments from attorneys for the Legislature who contend the issues with the boundaries she chose for next year’s election were the product of a flawed, unconstitutional process and that the map should be discarded.
Gibson said she would address those arguments separately.
The issue arose when Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson’s office compared the boundaries Gibson selected for the 2026 election to the current municipal boundaries and had questions about where certain residents should vote.
In Sandy, for example, the line separating the 1st Congressional District from the 4th slices through a home at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. In Summit County, three homes lie between the district boundary and the county line, although the boundaries are typically supposed to follow county lines.
And, also in Sandy, the 4th District line leaves a single home that is now part of the city hanging outside of the district, potentially creating a one-home voting precinct.
The issues arose because the parties in the litigation over Utah’s congressional maps agreed that the new maps should be built using census blocks as they existed in 2020. Since, however, new homes have been built and municipal boundaries have changed.
Most of the eight issues can be addressed, Gibson wrote, without moving the boundaries. The homes in question were assigned to a census block and will vote in the precinct assigned for that block.
In the case of the single, dangling Sandy home, the area in question has been annexed into the city since the 2020 census, and Gibson said the boundary should be moved to absorb the home into District 4.
The larger issue about whether Gibson’s decision to choose a map for 2026 was unconstitutional remains in dispute.
In a filing this week, the Legislature’s lawyers argued that Gibson infringed on lawmakers’ constitutional authority to designate political boundaries. They want Gibson to junk the map and let the original congressional boundaries — the districts the Legislature drew in 2021 that yielded the current four Republican seats and prompted the litigation — be used in next year’s election while lawmakers appeal her decision.
“The boundary issues … reveal that there was no good reason for taking [the plaintiffs’] proposed map over the Legislature’s duly enacted redistricting legislation,” the legislative attorneys wrote in their court filing. “The Legislature submits that, given the reality of the calendar, the only map approved in accordance with constitutional requirements and implementable in time to run the 2026 election is the 2021 Plan, so the 2021 Plan should govern.”
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case — the League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and a group of individual voters — say the Legislature dragged its feet for 10 days before trying to argue that “minor technical questions” to upend the entire process after they lost on the merits.
They contend the Legislature was given ample opportunity to draw a map that complied with the law. “That should not have been difficult,” the attorneys wrote. “Yet it failed to do so.”
With the lieutenant governor needing a map in place by Nov. 10 in order to conduct the 2026 elections, Gibson chose a map submitted by the plaintiffs in the case.
Those arguments are still pending before the judge.
The entire situation stems from nearly four years of litigation over the Better Boundaries initiative, known as Proposition 4, approved by voters in 2018. The initiative sought to create an independent redistricting commission and ban partisan gerrymandering — creating districts to benefit one party and harm another.
Legislators largely repealed the measure in 2021 and adopted the current map that splits the more Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County into four different districts and creates four safe Republican seats.
The plaintiffs sued, arguing that the repeal of Proposition 4 nullified citizens’ constitutional right to make laws through the initiative process and last year the Utah Supreme Court agreed, reinstating Proposition 4.
Gibson ruled in August that, with Proposition 4 back in place, the 2021 map the Legislature adopted was non-compliant and directed them to try again. Republican legislators adopted a map and submitted it to the court, but Gibson ruled it, too, failed to meet the standards in Proposition 4 and Gibson chose one of two maps submitted by the plaintiffs.
That map creates a donut-hole district in the northern portion of Salt Lake County that, an analysis by The Salt Lake Tribune shows, favors Democrats by as many as 17 percentage points.
Republican lawmakers have raged against the decision, plan to appeal the ruling and some have threatened to impeach Gibson. In an interview with KUTV this week, House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, conceded that there may not be time for an appeal to affect the 2026 election.
“We would like to make an appeal to the Supreme Court. The problem is the deadline has come and gone, which makes it really hard for us,” Schultz said. “We’re still looking at every option.”
Meanwhile, the Administrative Office of the Courts issued a rare statement this week confirming that threats had been made against Gibson and calling for civility.
Senate Republican leaders also issued a statement, saying that, while they strongly disagree with Gibson’s ruling, any disagreement “no matter how serious, never justifies threats, intimidation or violence of any kind.”
It is a third-degree felony under Utah law to threaten a judge.