- Utah lawmakers voted mostly along party lines to pave way for appeal of redistricting lawsuit.
- Republicans passed bills to change filing deadlines and expedite the case to Supreme Court.
- They also approved a resolution condemning the court for an "activist rewriting" of constitution.
Utah Republican lawmakers voted on Tuesday to reject the state’s new court-ordered congressional map and to amend candidate and legal timelines to pave the way for a full appeal of the state’s yearslong redistricting case.
But as state legislatures around the country wage bitter partisan battles over redrawing congressional maps, Beehive State lawmakers insisted that their concerns go far beyond the 2026 midterm elections.
On Monday, Indiana state senators advanced a Republican bill that redrew congressional boundaries to eliminate the state’s two Democrat-leaning districts after President Donald Trump pressured GOP lawmakers to help keep “the Majority in the House in D.C.”
On Tuesday, opponents of a new Missouri congressional map, drawn by GOP lawmakers in hopes of winning a formerly-Democratic seat in Kansas City, submitted more than 300,000 signatures in an attempt to put the map on hold until a referendum can be held.
The moves follow last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Texas Republicans to move forward with their mid-decade redistricting effort to create five new GOP-friendly seats. Similar measures have also passed in Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina.
But it is not just Republican-controlled states. Democrats in California, Virginia and Maryland have considered new maps to further redraw congressional boundaries in their states in response to what has become an escalating tit-for-tat over political power.
And Utah, with its recent court decision securing a +20 Democratic district, is often thrown into this category of Democratic Party “wins”.
On Nov. 10, 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson called lawmakers’ attempt to comply with redistricting requirements “an extreme partisan gerrymander,” and picked a map drawn by nonprofit plaintiffs to create a “Democratic-leaning district anchored in the northern portion of Salt Lake.”
Utah’s Republican lawmakers argued their intentions in Tuesday’s special session was to do the opposite of their counterparts in statehouses around the country: To limit the influence of national interest groups in shaping Utah policies, including on congressional maps and ballot initiatives.
“The people have lost their ability to have a representative government,” said Rep. Matt MacPherson, R-West Valley City. “It is the first step of many steps that need to be taken to claw back the power that the people entrusted in us.”
What redistricting bills passed
Democrats and Republicans gave impassioned speeches from the House and Senate floors of the Utah Capitol on Tuesday night framing the bills up for consideration as fundamental to the state’s representative form of government, and to the separation of powers.
Lawmakers passed five pieces of legislation: three removed procedural obstacles to appeal the Legislature’s redistricting lawsuit to the Utah Supreme Court, one delivered a harsh condemnation of the Utah judiciary and another repealed a law banning certain public sector union activities.
SB2001 pushes back the congressional candidate filing deadline from the beginning of January to after the legislative session in March. It is intended to give candidates and election workers more time to adjust their plans based on the legal fate of Utah’s congressional map.
It will also separate the congressional filing period from the declaration of intent to gather signatures, which will remain the same, so that congressional hopefuls who currently serve in the state Legislature can act as if they are running for reelection until the 2026 maps are finalized.
Criticism of this bill came from Republicans who disagreed with allowing congressional candidates to gather signatures from anywhere in the state to qualify for primary elections. Bill sponsors argued this change is necessary because candidates do not know what the final district boundaries are.
SB2002 and SJR201 would change Utah civil code to expedite election-related cases directly to the Utah Supreme Court, instead of first going to district and circuit courts, and allows an appeal of a redistricting case to the high court even if the state’s attorney fees have yet to be resolved.
While these changes apply specifically to Utah’s redistricting case, bill sponsor Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, said that this change would bring Utah in line with most other mid-size states which treat election cases differently to make sure they do not interfere with the election process timeline.
Republican officials, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, have all claimed that Gibson’s pattern of delaying her orders past deadlines has forced them into a difficult timeline to challenge her decision.
Legislature harshly condemns judiciary
Democrats, including several concerned citizens during a public hearing earlier in the day, accused the hurried changes to state procedure of being a way for Republicans to continue their ongoing effort to ignore Proposition 4, and maintain control over a partisan map-drawing process.
“This bill is another instance of the legislature trying to change the rules to benefit what we think is best, as opposed to letting the process play out,” said Rep. Andrew Stoddard, D-Sandy. “I’ve taken offense at a lot of things that have been said that those who don’t agree with a certain viewpoint are somehow not upholding the Constitution.”
The most spirited disagreement came during a discussion of a House resolution that sent a forceful message to the Utah judiciary, alleging the Utah Supreme Court had forged a legal precedent that would prevent the Legislature from amending ballot initiatives that harmed the state.
“(T)his super law doctrine contradicts over a century of Utah constitutional interpretation and, if unchecked, threatens the foundation of representative democracy by allowing courts to elevate ordinary statutes and personal preferences of unelected judges above the authority of the people’s elected legislators,” the resolution stated.
Democratic lawmakers, and multiple Republicans, took issue with the resolution’s description of the Utah Supreme Court as engaging in an “activist rewriting of the Utah Constitution,” and its condemnation of Gibson for “allowing special interest groups to impose a politically-driven map on the people of Utah.”
While its GOP proponents argued that the judiciary needed to know that their actions in relation to Proposition 4 had lost the trust of Utahns, Democrats said the criticisms were unfair, discounted fair interpretations of the state Constitution and harmed judicial institutions.
