Plaintiffs in the lawsuit over Utah’s 2021 congressional redistricting maps filed a new complaint Monday over the new gerrymandering standards adopted by the Legislature earlier that day, saying they “neuter” Proposition 4’s ban on partisan gerrymandering.
In a court filing, the League of Women Voters of Utah, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and several individual plaintiffs alleged the three fairness tests codified by lawmakers in special session Monday run counter to the proposition on redistricting reform and allow the Legislature to draw maps that favor Republicans.
"SB1011 profoundly impairs Proposition 4’s prohibition on partisan gerrymandering in several ways," the latest court filing reads. “Its primary feature is to infect the law with a cherry-picked test, the ‘partisan bias’ test, that is universally known to be inappropriate for use in states like Utah that are not politically competitive in statewide elections.”
When 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson threw out the 2021 congressional maps and ordered lawmakers to draw new political boundaries to comply with Proposition 4, the 2018 ballot initiative creating an independent redistricting commission and standards for redistricting, she said lawmakers are still tasked with determining the “judicial standards and the best available data and scientific and statistical methods” for evaluating whether new maps follow the standards.
Republicans initially proposed using just the partisan bias test, but added two additional tests — the ensemble analysis and the mean-median difference test — before the bill was adopted.
Put simply, the mean-median difference test compares the average vote share a party receives in all districts across the state with the vote share of the median district, or the district with the closest margin between the two parties. If the difference between those numbers is greater than a 2% deviation from the mean, the map fails under Utah law.
The ensemble analysis compares the proposed map to a simulation of at least 4,000 redistricting plans generated to comply with the standards. The proposed map must fall within the central 95% in order to pass.
Plaintiffs argued the bill would discard many maps that are compliant with Proposition 4 and would actually work to give Republicans an advantage in the newly enacted maps.
“Together, these changes to Proposition 4 systematically neuter its prohibition on partisan gerrymandering. In fact, they operate to require partisan gerrymandering,” the complaint states. “They do so by systematically disqualifying the vast majority of maps compliant with Proposition 4’s neutral redistricting criteria — any maps that create a district favoring Democrats in Salt Lake County — because they do not create a second Democratic district in imaginary tied election scenarios that have not and do not actually occur in Utah.”
In a statement, the lawmaker who sponsored the bill codifying the three tests said the Legislature was reviewing the latest lawsuit, but added that they are “confident” they acted under the court order when adopting the standards.
“Even Judge Gibson acknowledged that Proposition 4 is ‘general’ and ‘nonspecific,’ leaving it to lawmakers to establish the process to review maps,” Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Highland, told KSL.com in a statement. “The bill passed (Monday) does exactly that, implementing three statistical methods, two of which were proposed by Democrats. Reviews of compliance with Proposition 4 should be based on clear, objective criteria, not open to personal interpretation.”
The lawsuit alleges six counts of violation of Utah’s Constitution, including free speech rights, rights of voters to have free elections and to alter and reform their government. The plaintiffs asked the judge to declare SB1011 unconstitutional and to block it from taking effect.
Plaintiffs submit their own proposed maps
The plaintiffs also submitted a pair of proposed maps to the court for consideration alongside the map approved by lawmakers on Monday, saying the Legislature’s map “fails to abide by and conform to Proposition 4’s requirements.”
Map 1 was selected from an ensemble of 10,000 computer-generated maps designed to comply with the priorities of Proposition 4, according to a court filing. Map 2, meanwhile, is derived from Option C adopted by the Legislature, with changes “correcting the enacted map’s failure” to follow Proposition 4 standards, plaintiffs state.
“In particular, it corrects the enacted map’s failure to minimize municipal and county splits to the greatest extent practicable and the enacted map’s failure to comply with Proposition 4’s prohibition against purposefully or unduly favoring or disfavoring political parties,” the court filing states.
Proposition 4’s first standard directs map drawers to “minimize the division of counties, cities and towns.” The plaintiffs’ filing includes a chart comparing the municipality splits in their two maps with the splits in the Legislature’s proposal.
Both plaintiffs’ maps split one municipality into two pieces — Midvale in Map 1 and Pleasant Grove in Map 2 — while the Legislature’s map splits three cities into 11 total pieces: North Salt Lake in two, Pleasant Grove into three and Millcreek in six pieces, according to plaintiffs.
All three maps split three counties into at least two pieces: Salt Lake, Utah and Weber. In the Legislature’s Option C, Utah County is split between three districts.
Both sides have until Oct. 17 to submit briefs and expert reports in support of their maps, and an evidentiary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 23-24. Gibson will then select a map to be in place by Nov. 10, in time for next year’s midterm election.