The Utah Legislature sent a message on Monday.
After begrudgingly following a judge’s orders to redraw Utah congressional maps, Republican lawmakers promised the state’s redistricting saga was far from over.
Members of the GOP majority doubled down on plans to appeal a lawsuit challenging their reforms to a 2018 ballot initiative all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Their response highlights an escalating conflict between the branches of Utah’s government: Who should have the final authority to translate voters’ preferences into law — legislators, or the courts?
“It is a fundamental disagreement as to how our republic form of government functions,” said state Sen. Brady Brammer in an interview with the Deseret News.
Democrats have accused their colleagues in the majority of ignoring the will of the people by finding workarounds to Proposition 4, or the Better Boundaries initiative.
Republicans, meanwhile, have framed a series of unfavorable rulings as acts of judicial activism exerting improper authority over elected representatives.
In 2024, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature cannot transform or toss out ballot initiatives that aim to alter the structure of government.
Last month, 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson said the Legislature had done just that, and ordered lawmakers to create new congressional maps on a truncated timeline.
Lawmakers lambasted the judgment while doing their best to comply. Gibson now has until Nov. 10 to green-light the Legislature’s proposals or pick an alternative.
If Gibson goes with another map not approved by the Legislature, Republican lawmakers have signaled they would treat it as a clear violation of the state constitution.
But regardless of Gibson’s decision, lawmakers intend to ask Utah’s Supreme Court to change its mind, or they will settle the debate at the highest court in the land.
“What we’re seeing right now is a unique, and probably a historic, tug-of-war between two different branches of government,” Sen. Stephanie Pitcher told the Deseret News.
Did the courts overreach?
The loudest message heard during Monday’s special legislative session was Republican lawmakers exclaiming that they should not have to be there in the first place.
Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, called the court-ordered process a “joke.” House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, said it was something “all citizens should be concerned about.”
At the center of the controversy is the belief that the Utah Constitution gives exclusive authority over redistricting to the Legislature, according to Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove.
By creating a new category of “super laws” related to some ballot initiatives, the Utah Supreme Court increased judicial interference in the legislative process, Brammer said.
This tips the scale of checks-and-balances in the court’s favor, Brammer said, exemplified by Gibson’s “order” for the Legislature to “enact” a new congressional plan.
The judge later replaced this language, in a Saturday morning amendment, saying her court “failed to recognize the separation of powers” and “overstepped its authority.”
Bill Duncan, the Law & Religious Freedom Fellow at Sutherland Institute, said Republican legislators are right to protest the court leveraging its influence this way.
“I think it’s clear that the court can’t have authority to enforce the intent of voters, which is really going to be an entirely subjective question,” Duncan told the Deseret News.
Duncan expects before the 2026 midterm elections that lawmakers will bring the Prop 4 lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court — which has a precedent of leaving redistricting decisions up to the legislative branch.
State Rep. Candice Pierucci, R-Herriman, said the details of legislation should be left to elected officials, not nonprofit groups claiming to speak on behalf of the people.
In 2020, and again in 2025, the Legislature did its best to incorporate feedback from constituents and Democratic colleagues to compose new maps, Pierucci said.
On Monday, the Legislature passed a bill specifying three tests to be used to ensure nonpartisan redistricting, which contained two filters proposed by Democratic lawmakers.
All redistricting processes, including an independent commission, are political, so Brammer’s bill demonstrates the Legislature’s desire to remove as much subjectivity as possible, Pierucci said.
Did lawmakers dismiss voters?
When Utah Democrats are presented with these arguments, they mostly hear sour grapes — conservative lawmakers offended by any check on their power.
Utah’s GOP-led Legislature should stop accusing the courts of malfeasance, Pitcher said, and should start reflecting on whether overhauling the 2018 initiative that Utah voters passed actually overstepped their authority.
The actions of her colleagues in recent days showed they are still uninterested in honoring the spirit of Prop 4, which discourages purposefully dividing the Democratic vote in Salt Lake County, according to Pitcher, D-Millcreek.
Rep. Doug Owens, D-Millcreek, called the special session “a partisan exercise” because he thought his colleagues ignored the best tests of partisan fairness which usually produced a map with one competitive district.
Owens, who also served on the redistricting committee, clarified he was not pushing for a pick-up opportunity for Democrats, but he said that “a neutral process inevitably yields that.”
The map approved by the Legislature on Monday solidified two seats — District 1 and District 4 — as deeply Republican, while making Districts 2 and 3 more competitive.
Elizabeth Rasmussen, the executive director of Better Boundaries, told the Deseret News the Legislature’s actions on Monday “locked in some of the worst measures of fairness to be used in a state like ours.”
The approved map continues to disproportionately benefit Republicans — evidenced by the fact it was endorsed by the state GOP — and once again ignores the signal voters sent by passing Prop 4, Rasmussen said.
Courts are not attempting to take away the Legislature’s authority, according to Rasmussen, they are trying to ensure the Legislature “follows the law” as found in Prop 4, which will allow for “a representative Utah.”
“I don’t think any sole organization or person should have power,” Rasmussen said. “But as we have checks and balances to ensure it doesn’t become a political process, I think we can come to a great middle ground here.”
Should ballot initiatives be left alone?
At the bottom of Utah’s redistricting debate is whether ballot initiatives should be treated as untouchable when they change government structure, or whether they always require the guiding hand of legislators.
In this case, Pitcher said, a ballot initiative was the last resort for voters who wanted a check on lawmakers who could potentially “game the system” in Utah by making legislative boundaries less competitive.
Letting voters make policy when they feel ignored is “one of the fundamental tenets of democracy,” Pitcher said, adding that it is doubly offensive for the Legislature to then use taxpayer dollars to fight successful initiatives.
Pitcher and Owens agreed that recent rhetoric on judges, and a bill passed Monday allowing the governor to appoint the chief justice, threaten to distract judges from their job of interpreting the constitution.
But Brammer said this is exactly the problem: some judges appear to have gotten away from simply stating what the law is, and have begun stretching their interpretations to the point where they are making policy from the bench.
One reason the Legislature must remain free to alter ballot initiatives, Brammer said, is that all legislation requires multiple drafts, legal tests and future amendments, which might not be allowed under the new legal regime.
The worry, according to Duncan, is that if some ballot initiatives have protected status, then special interest groups will be able to co-opt the initiative process and create laws that courts can enforce however they please.
“It’s not that the initiative process itself is ineffective,” Duncan said, “but that the use of initiatives by the courts undermines a more foundational principle, which is the principle of separation of powers.”