Utah News Dispatch
Utah Reps. Maloy, Owens ask federal court to block new court-ordered congressional map
People arrive to vote at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Another wrinkle has surfaced in Utah’s ongoing redistricting legal battle.
Two members of Utah’s all-Republican congressional delegation — Reps. Celeste Maloy and Burgess Owens — along with nearly a dozen local leaders and sheriffs have filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to throw out the state’s court-ordered congressional map that created one Democratic and three Republican districts.
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah names the state’s top election official, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, as a defendant. It asks for a three-judge panel to declare the state’s court-ordered map as “unconstitutionally imposed and agreed to by state actors — specifically a state district judge and the Lieutenant Governor — with no authority” under federal or state law to impose a map “other than one adopted by the Legislature.”
Owens and Maloy did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday morning. But they and the suit’s other plaintiffs announced its filing in an op-ed for the Deseret News published Monday evening, in which they wrote they don’t allege “malice, bad faith or improper motive” on Henderson’s part.
“To the contrary, this federal lawsuit seeks to relieve her of being compelled to carry out a state court order that exceeds federal constitutional limits,” they wrote. “The present posture places her in an untenable position, caught between judicial instruction and constitutional command.”
The lawsuit’s arguments align with what Utah’s Republican legislative leaders have long contended in a separate redistricting lawsuit that’s spent years winding its way through Utah’s state-level courts — that the Legislature has the sole authority to set the state’s political boundaries.
That’s despite recent court rulings that have determined the GOP-controlled Legislature overstepped its constitutional authority when it undid a 2018 voter-approved anti-gerrymandering ballot initiative known as Better Boundaries’ Proposition 4, which sought to create an independent redistricting process with neutral map-drawing standards.
In Utah redistricting case, judge explains why she ruled against Legislature
After ordering a remedial map-drawing process to replace the 2021 Utah Legislature’s map — which she declared the result of an unconstitutional process — 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson rejected the Utah Legislature’s proposed remedial map, known as map C, after she determined it failed “in many ways” to comply with Proposition 4’s neutral standards. That 2021 map split Utah’s most populated county, Salt Lake County, into four congressional districts, resulting in four safe Republican districts.
Instead, Gibson picked an alternative map submitted by the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, which include pro-democracy groups like the League of Women Voters of Utah, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and the Campaign Legal Center. The map created a compact Democratic district in northern Salt Lake County and three large Republican districts spanning across the rest of the Wasatch Front and into rural areas of the state.
After alleging that the resulting court-ordered map was the most “gerrymandered” map in state history, Utah’s Republican legislative leaders are currently moving to appeal Gibson’s decision to the Utah Supreme Court.
Now Maloy, Owens and other Utah leaders are also looking to challenge the decision on the federal level. Other plaintiffs include:
- Utah County Commissioner Amelia Powers Gardner
- Duchesne County Commissioner Greg Miles
- Juab County Commissioner Clint Painter
- Washington County Commissioners Victor Iverson and Adam Snow
- San Juan County Commissioner Lori Maughan
- Beaver County Commissioner Tammy Pearson
- St. George Mayor Jimmie Hughes
- Kane County Sheriff Tracy Glover
- Cache County Sheriff Chad Jensen
- Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith
The question posed in the lawsuit “is not whether Utah’s congressional lines should be compact, competitive, or politically ‘fair’ by some contested metric,” the filing says. “Instead, this case presents the fundamental question of whether the People of Utah, acting through their Legislature, as defined in the Utah Constitution, retain the sovereign authority the Framers reserved to them — or whether that authority may now be exercised by a single state district judge willing to adopt and implement plans submitted by special-interest litigants seeking partisan ends.”
Maloy, Owens and the other plaintiffs are urging the federal district court to also “remand the selection of a congressional map” to the Utah Legislature. If the Legislature doesn’t select a new map, they’re also urging the federal judicial panel to “declare that the 2021 map governs.”
They’re requesting that the federal court both preliminarily and permanently block Henderson from implementing Gibson’s court-ordered map, along with “any congressional map other than one passed by the Legislature pursuant to Article IX of the Utah Constitution and free of coercion from Judge Gibson.”
In response to a request for comment, the lieutenant governor’s office told Utah News Dispatch: “We typically don’t comment on pending litigation.”
It’s unclear whether the federal court will take up the lawsuit in time to enact a new map ahead of Utah’s 2026 elections. In an effort to allow more time for the possibility of implementing a different congressional map for the midterms, Utah lawmakers held a special session to push the state’s congressional candidate filing period back about two months, to March 9-13.
In their filing, attorneys for Maloy and Owens note that neither of them “know where to file for office or begin campaigning,” blaming “confusion” under the current court-ordered map.
“For Representative Maloy, it is difficult for her to know where to spend her money — whether in her current district, which includes Salt Lake, Davis, and Tooele counties, or the new district, which includes multiple other counties,” the lawsuit says. “She faces a similarly difficult decision regarding how to spend her time — in the counties she currently represents or meeting voters and campaigning in an entirely new, massive area of Utah.”
Utah lawmakers condemn courts while anti-gerrymandering supporters urge ‘hear our voice’
Rep. Owens, the filing adds, “faces similarly difficult decisions that divide his money, time, and resources.”
“The Representatives are thus being forced to make choices that uniquely burden their ability to run for office in the districts they live in and to represent adequately their current constituents, while still campaigning effectively and reaching potential new voters across most of Utah,” the lawsuit says.
They argue that Gibson’s court-ordered map “has not followed the normal constitutional course. For this reason too, their constituents have been deprived of their right to have their representatives chosen as the U.S. and Utah Constitutions require.”
In response to the new federal suit, Elizabeth Rasmussen, executive director of Better Boundaries, issued a statement calling the filing “the latest attempt to undo a decision Utah voters made years ago.”
“Instead of respecting that vote, elected officials continue to attack it from every direction at once, through a repeal petition, ongoing litigation, attacks on the courts, signals they may pursue another constitutional amendment, and now this lawsuit,” Rasmussen said. “Voters have been clear about what they want. At some point, lawmakers need to stop fighting the public and start listening.”
Katharine Biele, president of the League of Women Voters of Utah, said the new lawsuit “has no merit and raises the same arguments that Judge Gibson carefully considered and rejected.”
“The map currently in place is fair and legal,” she said. “We will continue to defend Proposition 4 and the rights of Utah voters.”
