The Utah Constitution could not be clearer: “The Legislature shall divide the state into congressional, legislative and other districts as provided by law.”
That is not ambiguous. It identifies who has the authority: the Legislature.
And it instructs what must be done: divide the state into districts.
In a court ruling issued Monday, 3rd District Court Judge Dianna Gibson said the Utah Legislature’s 2021 congressional maps violate the state constitution and ordered Utah lawmakers to draw a new one.
In the ruling, however, Gibson stripped the clause instructing the legislature to divide the state into districts of its plain meaning, elevated an ordinary statute above the Constitution, and reinstalled Proposition 4 — a citizen initiative designed to reform the redistricting process in Utah — as if it were a constitutional amendment.
That is not judicial review. It is judicial overreach. It is legislation from the bench.
Here is why the ruling is deeply flawed and why it must be overturned on appeal.
Issue 1: Misreading the Constitution
Gibson argued that Article IX, Section 1 does not give the Legislature “sole and exclusive” authority, but must be read within Utah’s lawmaking process, which includes initiatives.
That interpretation empties the clause of its force. The text is explicit: “The Legislature shall divide the state….” That is a clear, mandatory assignment of authority, not a scheduling note. For 130 years, from statehood in 1896 to today, the Legislature has carried out this duty.
Pretending otherwise erases the Constitution’s words and opens the door for commissions, initiatives, or judges themselves to intrude on legislative prerogative. That is not what the framers intended.
Issue 2: Elevating a statute above the constitution
Proposition 4, passed in 2018, was a statute. By definition, statutes are subject to amendment and repeal by the Legislature. Gibson treated Prop 4 as if it were a constitutional amendment, immune from legislative change.
That turns an ordinary statute into a “super-statute,” something our system does not allow. Constitutions limit legislatures. Statutes do not.
By flipping that hierarchy upside down, the court wiped out a duly enacted law and retroactively imposed Prop 4 as supreme over legislative judgment. That is raw judicial power, not constitutional interpretation.
Issue 3: Misuse of federal precedent
The order leans on cases like Smiley v. Holm, Hildebrant, Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, and Moore v. Harper. Every one of those cases says redistricting is a legislative function that must follow a state’s ordinary lawmaking process.
None of them authorize judges to enforce political “fairness” standards. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court in Rucho v. Common Cause made it crystal clear that partisan gerrymandering is a political question outside the competence of courts.
Gibson has not applied precedent. She has stretched it to justify judicial control over inherently political questions.
Issue 4: Distorting the people’s right to reform
Utah’s Constitution guarantees the people the right to “alter or reform” their government. The Utah Supreme Court has been clear that this right must operate within the bounds of the Constitution itself.
Gibson treated Proposition 4 as if it could amend Article IX by statute, arguably elevating it above the Constitution itself.
But initiatives cannot amend the Constitution. Only a constitutional amendment can do that. Elevating an initiative above constitutional text is a distortion of the alter-or-reform clause. It turns a safeguard for direct democracy into a veto over representative government.
Issue 5: Turning courts into mapmakers
The order enjoins the 2021 maps and directs the Legislature to pass new ones under Proposition 4’s standards, with the court retaining oversight. That turns judges into political mapmakers.
Courts are supposed to enforce constitutional guarantees like equal population, racial fairness, and compliance with the Voting Rights Act. They are not supposed to sit as super-legislatures drawing lines and weighing political advantage.
That is government by decree, not government by consent.
The historic urban-rural balance
And by the way, some have argued that the legislature’s division of Salt Lake City into four districts was purely partisan. But that is not the case, since there was legitimate concern that districts represent both urban and rural constituents in balanced fashion.
When Utah entered the Union in 1896, the framers of our Constitution deliberately vested redistricting authority in the Legislature. They understood that if line-drawing were left to unelected bodies or single commissions, political power would inevitably concentrate along the Wasatch Front, where most of the population lived, leaving rural Utah without a voice. From the coal towns of Carbon County to the ranches of San Juan, Sevier, and Box Elder, Utahns outside Salt Lake feared being sidelined.
The first congressional election in 1896 was conducted at-large because Utah had only one seat. After the 1910 Census, Utah gained a second seat, and in 1912 the Legislature enacted its first congressional districts. One district encompassed Salt Lake County and the urbanizing Wasatch Front; the other ensured representation for the vast rural counties stretching across central and southern Utah. That principle — urban growth balanced with rural representation — was repeated after each subsequent census in 1920, 1930, 1940, and beyond.
Ensuring that rural communities were not politically marginalized has always been a driving purpose of legislative redistricting in our state. And legislative body elected from every corner of the state was the only mechanism capable of protecting both urban and rural communities. That safeguard has been honored for nearly 130 years, and it should not now be erased by judicial invention.
Why this matters
If this ruling stands, every initiative could be transformed into a super-statute, immune from legislative oversight if a judge decides it counts as a “reform.”
That would collapse the balance of powers and place judges above both the Constitution and the elected Legislature.
This is not what Utahns voted for. It is not what our Constitution commands. And it is not how a republic governs itself.
Utah must not be governed by judicial fiat. The people of Utah deserve maps drawn under the Constitution, not decrees imposed from the bench. They deserve laws written by their elected representatives, not super-statutes enforced by judicial activism. And they deserve a Legislature that will defend those principles without hesitation.
That is exactly what I and my colleagues in the Utate Senate and House intend to do.
John D. Johnson is a Utah state senator and professor emeritus at Utah State University.