Utah News Dispatch
Utah’s redistricting ruling catches Trump’s ire
President Donald Trump speaks to the media as, left to right, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon look on after signing executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on April 23, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The court ruling issued earlier this week ordering Utah lawmakers to redraw their congressional map has caught the ire of President Donald Trump.
The president called 3rd District Court Judge Dianna Gibson’s ruling itself “unconstitutional” in a post on social media Wednesday. He also urged Utah’s Republican-controlled Legislature to push back.
“How did such a wonderful Republican State like Utah, which I won in every Election, end up with so many Radical Left Judges?” Trump said in the post.
Like several Utah Republicans did in reaction to the ruling Monday, Trump insinuated it was a result of an “activist Judiciary, which wants to take away our Congressional advantage, and will do everything possible to do so.”
Judge orders Utah Legislature to draw new congressional maps
Gibson was appointed to the bench by former Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, in 2018. The Republican-supermajority Senate voted unanimously to confirm her without controversy.
The day of her confirmation, Nov. 14, 2018, on the Senate floor, Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, called her an “extremely impressive candidate.” Weiler — chair of the Senate Judicial Confirmation Committee that favorably recommended her appointment — quipped lightheartedly at the time that he was told “by one of the smarter attorneys I know (that) ‘if we didn’t confirm her we were all a bunch of idiots.’” He said he agreed.
Gibson received her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law in 1996. After she graduated, she worked as a law clerk at the Utah Court of Appeals before joining the law firm of Parsons Behle & Latimer, a top law firm with multiple locations in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Nevada.
Gibson’s ruling this week came more than two years after she initially dismissed the claim that the Legislature overstepped when it repealed and replaced a 2018 voter-approved initiative, Proposition 4. That initiative came from an effort known as Better Boundaries, which sought to create an independent redistricting commission with the purpose of preventing partisan gerrymandering in Utah. Gibson, however, also denied a request to throw out the lawsuit entirely.
The plaintiffs in the anti-gerrymandering lawsuit then asked the Utah Supreme Court to weigh in on the case. Last year, the Utah Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion that reversed Gibson’s earlier dismissal and sent the case back to district court for further proceedings.
A judge has ruled Utah’s congressional map unconstitutional. What now?
That Utah Supreme Court ruling made clear that lawmakers do not have unfettered power to repeal or change all types of ballot initiatives, and that if they make changes that “impair” a “government reform” initiative, they must show they are “narrowly tailored to advance a compelling government interest.”
While criticizing that ruling, Utah Republicans argued the Utah Constitution’s plain language requires the Legislature to carry out the task of redistricting; Gibson’s ruling said the term “Legislature” in that provision “does not exclude the legislative power of the people.”
“Neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Utah Constitution grants sole and exclusive authority over redistricting to the Legislature,” Gibson wrote. “Because legislative power is shared co-equally and co-extensively between the Legislature and the people, and because redistricting is legislative, the people have the fundamental constitution right and authority to propose redistricting legislation that is binding on the Legislature.”
The ruling comes as a redistricting arms race is unfolding across the nation as Trump looks to grow Republicans’ slim majority in the U.S. House ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
For years, Utah’s four U.S. House seats have been reliably Republican, especially after the Utah Legislature went through their last redistricting process in 2021.
A redistricting arms race is unfolding. A looming court ruling may push Utah into the spotlight
That year, Utah lawmakers used SB200, the law they replaced the Better Boundaries initiative with to turn the independent redistricting commission into an advisory body that lawmakers could ultimately ignore. They did just that when they adopted their congressional map in 2021 that the courts have now deemed unconstitutional.
Though states like Texas and California have engaged in rare, mid-decade redistricting, Utah’s redistricting process is court ordered — and it has the potential of turning at least one of Utah’s four U.S. seats competitive for Democrats for the first time in years.
Trump urged Utah Republicans to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“This incredible State sent four great Republicans to Congress, and we want to keep it that way,” the president continued. “The Utah GOP has to STAY UNITED, and make sure their four terrific Republican Congressmen stay right where they are!”
