A judge threw out Utah’s congressional maps and ordered the Legislature to draw new districts that comply with the 2018 voter-backed Better Boundaries initiative, which sought to ban partisan gerrymandering.

Judge Dianna Gibson’s ruling Monday evening prohibits the current congressional maps from being used in any future election and gave the state lawmakers until Sept. 24 to adopt new boundaries that comply with Proposition 4, the citizen-passed initiative.

In her 79-page ruling, Gibson wrote that the Legislature “intentionally stripped away all of [the initiative’s] core redistricting standards and procedures that were binding on it.”

“To permit the 2021 Congressional Plan to remain in place would reward the very constitutional violation this Court has already identified and would nullify the people’s 2018 redistricting reform that they passed through Proposition 4,” she wrote.

The judge’s decision comes as President Donald Trump has pushed Texas to redraw its boundaries in an attempt to create five additional Republican seats, and California has countered with a Democratic gerrymander of its own as the two parties battle to gain the upper hand ahead of the 2026 election that will decide who controls the U.S. House.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Elizabeth Rasmussen of Better Boundaries speaks at a news conference in Salt Lake City on Monday, Aug. 25, 2025. A judge earlier ruled that the Legislature will have 30 days to adopt new maps that comply with the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative guidelines.

Text messages to spokespeople for the Utah Senate and House of Representatives requesting a comment on the ruling were not immediately returned Monday night.

In a joint statement Monday night to other members of the media, Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, said they were “disappointed by the court’s decision.”

“We remain committed to protecting the voices of Utahns and upholding the Legislature’s state and federal constitutional authority to draw congressional districts,” they said. “We will carefully review the ruling and consider our next steps.”

[Read: Here’s the ruling in Utah’s congressional redistricting case]

Whether Utah can have new maps in place in time for the 2026 election remains to be seen. Gibson gave the Legislature 30 days to adopt a new map that complies with the Better Boundaries initiative and will allow the plaintiffs in the case to submit recommendations as well.

Elizabeth Rasmussen, the executive director of Better Boundaries, told reporters at a news conference Monday evening that the organization anticipates Utah will, in fact, have new congressional maps in place for 2026 — no matter the Legislature’s next steps.

“We’re going to make sure this timeline is followed to the best of our abilities,” Rasmussen said, “and we hope the Legislature will respect that decision.”

Gibson has scheduled a status conference with attorneys for the plaintiffs and the legislative defendants on Friday to plan the next move. She plans to hold a hearing on the proposed maps in mid-October.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rex Facer II and Christine Durham at a news conference held by the Utah’s bipartisan redistricting panel in Taylorsville on Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021.

The lieutenant governor’s office has said in court filings that boundaries need to be in place no later than Nov. 1 so candidates can file to run for the four U.S. House seats in January.

And attorneys for the Legislature had previously indicated in court filings that they would appeal to the Utah Supreme Court, and potentially the U.S. Supreme Court, if Gibson ruled against them, meaning more court wrangling is all but certain.

At a news conference Monday night, Better Boundaries board member Ryan Bell said the ruling is “larger than Utah.”

“What this means is that we will have more free and fair elections in Utah and we will send to our Congress people more accountable and less extreme. Utah will be responsible for having a less polarized Congress,” Bell said. “I hope that Utah will become a beacon to many other states that pass similar laws, fight gerrymandering and have fair election maps so that we can have a more balanced and representative and accountable Congress.”

Gibson’s decision only applies to the state’s four congressional districts since state legislative districts and school board districts were not challenged in the lawsuit.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Hundreds of protesters gather on the steps of the State Capitol, a the Gerrymandering protest, on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021.

Utah House Democrats called Gibson’s ruling a “victory for the people of Utah, who demanded fair representation when they passed Proposition 4 and established an independent redistricting commission.”

With California and Texas engaged in a tit-for-tat redrawing of maps, the Democrats said that “this fight is bigger than Utah. … Utah is now on the frontlines of this national struggle, where the integrity of our democracy and the principle of fair representation are under direct attack.”

The maps proposed in 2021 by the state’s independent redistricting commission included at least one potentially winnable seat for a Democratic candidate. The maps ultimately adopted by the Republican Legislature consisted of four safe GOP seats and split Salt Lake County, home base for Utah Democrats, into four separate districts.

Gibson does not explicitly say in her ruling that the maps the Legislature adopted were gerrymandered. Rather, she found that the Legislature violated the Utah Constitution by repealing Proposition 4 and enacting maps that did not follow the standards and processes voters had enacted.

“The nature of the violation lies in the Legislature’s refusal to respect the people’s exercise of their constitutional lawmaking power,” she wrote, calling the maps “the product of an unconstitutional process.”

“The Legislature’s unconstitutional act, if left unremedied, will be compounded with each election cycle,” Gibson wrote.

Utah Republican Party Chairman Rob Axson called the decision “judicial activism in action.”

“Once again, certain members of Utah’s judiciary abandon the principles of our Constitutional Republic,” Axson said in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune. “Using earlier flawed rulings to justify their opinions over the principles of our founding is a special kind of hubris.”

How we got here

In 2018, the group Better Boundaries ran a ballot initiative aimed at creating an independent redistricting commission that would redraw political boundaries after the 2020 Census, the intent being to eliminate gerrymandering — or drawing political boundaries benefiting one party to the detriment of another.

The initiative passed, but before the commission did its work, the Legislature significantly weakened the voter-approved law, making the commission’s work advisory-only.

Republican lawmakers then ignored the commission’s recommendations and adopted maps that created four safe GOP congressional districts.

The League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and a handful of affected voters sued, arguing that the Utah Constitution guarantees the public a right to run ballot initiatives to reform government and that right becomes meaningless when the Legislature can repeal or significantly alter the will of voters.

Last July, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously agreed.

“We hold that when Utahns exercise their right to reform the government through a citizen initiative, their exercise of these rights is protected from government infringement,” wrote Justice Paige Peterson for the five justices — all of them Republican appointees. “This means that government-reform initiatives are constitutionally protected from unfettered legislative amendment, repeal, or replacement.”

Attorney Taylor Meehan talks with Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson during a break in oral arguments for a case challenging the state’s congressional districts before the Utah Supreme Court in Salt Lake City, Tuesday, July 11, 2023. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, Pool)

While the Supreme Court’s initial ruling regarding ballot initiatives was a blow to the Legislature’s redistricting, the justices did not scrap the congressional boundaries drawn by the Republican lawmakers.

Instead, they sent the case back to Gibson to decide if the Legislature had a compelling reason to undo the anti-gerrymandering initiative and, if it did not, to determine what should be done to fix the constitutional violation.

Attorneys for the Legislature argued the Legislature has the power under the U.S. Constitution to draw maps it wants. Even if the decision to rescind most of the anti-gerrymandering initiative was unconstitutional, they argued, it doesn’t mean that the boundaries the Legislature adopted were automatically invalid.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the League of Women Voters and MWEG argued that if the court reinstates the language citizens approved in the initiative, the districts the Legislature drew do not comply with the standards or procedures voters wanted and have to be redrawn.

And last fall, Republican legislators tried to supersede the Supreme Court’s initiative ruling by amending the Utah Constitution to make clear that legislators could repeal or alter any ballot initiative they wanted for any reason.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Ryan Bell of Better Boundaries speaks at a news conference in Salt Lake City on Monday, Aug. 25, 2025. A judge earlier ruled that the Legislature will have 30 days to adopt new maps that comply with the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative guidelines.

But again, the Supreme Court stepped in, voiding the amendment on two grounds. First, justices said the Legislature had failed to comply with a constitutional requirement to publish amendments in newspapers ahead of the election and, second, the ballot question written by House Speaker Mike Schultz and Senate President Stuart Adams was so misleading that voters opposed to weakening the initiative power would likely have ended up voting for the GOP Legislature’s amendment.

“Today’s district court ruling is a major victory for voters and a major blow to extreme, out-of-touch politicians,” Utah Democratic Party Chair Brian King said in a statement. “Finally, despite the best efforts of the legislative supermajority, Utahns will be getting fair maps and real representation, something they voted for nearly eight years ago.”