Judge orders tweak to clean up Utah’s congressional map while lawmakers argue for stay

David Reymann, attorney for the plaintiffs who sued the Utah Legislature over their congressional maps, speaks at a press conference outside the Third District Courthouse in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. Late the night before, 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, choosing their submitted map to be used in the 2026 elections. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

The legal wrangling in Utah’s ongoing redistricting saga isn’t over. 

In a flurry of more court filings last week, 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson was again tasked with sorting through more issues with Utah’s congressional boundaries after Utah’s top election officials raised some technical issues with the new map. 

Split homes and other boundary issues in Sandy, Cottonwood Heights, Alpine, Highland, Orem, Huntsville and Summit County led the lieutenant governor’s office to ask the court for clarifications to Utah’s new map ahead of implementing it for the 2026 elections. 

Meanwhile, attorneys for the Utah Legislature — which continues to protest the state’s court-ordered redistricting process as a violation of the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches — argued the lieutenant governor’s request for boundary clarifications “amplifies how these proceedings have transgressed the Utah and U.S. Constitutions,” they wrote in court filings. 

“Plaintiffs’ counsel can instruct the Lieutenant Governor how to resolve those issues. But in doing so, the constitutional problem — the denial of the Legislature’s constitutional authority to redistrict — only becomes more obvious,” legislative attorneys wrote. 

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Further, lawmakers’ attorneys argued the boundary issues “further reveal that there was no good reason” for the judge to choose the plaintiffs’ map over the Legislature’s map, arguing that the boundary issues resulted in a similar number of county and city splits as lawmakers’ preferred boundaries. 

Therefore, they argued the “only map approved in accordance with constitutional requirements” is the Legislature’s 2021 congressional map, and that Gibson should throw out the plaintiffs’ map, which she picked on Nov. 10. 

Months ago, Gibson issued a ruling voiding the 2021 map as the result of an unconstitutional process, ruling the Utah Legislature overstepped its constitutional authority when it undid a 2018 voter-approved ballot initiative known as Proposition 4, which implemented an independent redistricting process. In that August ruling, Gibson restored Proposition 4 as Utah law, while ordering a “remedial” court process to enact a lawful map ahead of the 2026 elections. 

In that court-ordered process, Gibson ultimately picked a map submitted by the plaintiffs instead of the Legislature’s preferred map — ruling that lawmakers’ map, known as map C, didn’t adhere to Proposition 4’s neutral map-drawing criteria to the “greatest extent practicable.” The map she picked creates a compact congressional district in northern Salt Lake County — resulting in one Democratic-leaning district and three safe Republican districts. 

In response to the Legislature’s complaints against the new map, attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case argued that the boundary issues identified by the lieutenant governor — which were largely the result of annexations that took place after the 2020 census — were not out of the ordinary in redistricting and that the Legislature’s attorneys didn’t follow Utah’s rules of civil procedure when requesting the stay. 

“Ten days after this Court’s ruling — ten days in which an entire emergency appellate process could have commenced and completed — Legislative Defendants now suggest in three paragraphs at the end of an unrelated 10-page filing that the Court should stay its orders in this case and permit the 2021 congressional map to govern the 2026 election,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. 

“They seize on minor technical questions raised by the Lieutenant Governor — questions that arise with every redistricting map, are more prevalent in Map C, and exist in the 2021 congressional map — as the hook to belatedly raise this request,” they added, arguing it should be rejected. 

After hearing recommendations from both the lieutenant governor and the plaintiffs to remedy the boundary issues, Gibson on Friday issued an order implementing a minor fix to move a single home in Sandy from District 1 to District 4 to prevent a one-home precinct, which would have resulted in voter privacy issues. 

As for the boundary issues, Gibson deferred to the lieutenant governor’s discretion to make boundary clarifications when there is uncertainty. 

“The Court notes that Plaintiffs have suggested an approach to making determinations with respect to those issues and the Lieutenant Governor may take those suggestions into consideration when making determinations for implementation,” the judge wrote. “Likewise, as the Lieutenant Governor notes, the Utah Code grants discretion in making determinations should questions subsequently arise.”

As for the Legislature’s complaints regarding the number of city splits, the judge noted that attorneys for both the plaintiffs and the Legislature agreed to use 2020 census files in the court’s “remedial” map-drawing proceedings. 

“For that reason, any municipal annexations that took place after the Census Bureau provided the 2020 municipal file did not factor into any analysis (by the parties, any experts or the Court) assessing the map proposals,” Gibson wrote. “Notably, no party raised any issues regarding any possible discrepancies between the 2020 municipal boundaries and current municipal boundaries.” 

Gibson issued her order last week while acknowledging that time is of the essence, with state election officials needing to implement the map with enough time for county clerks to finalize their precincts ahead of candidate filing opening in January.

The judge said she would explain her legal reasoning — as well as address the Legislature’s attorneys request for a stay — at a later date. 

“The Court will endeavor to issue that analysis as soon as possible,” Gibson wrote. 

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