The Utah Supreme Court on Thursday handed a major win to those legally challenging the Utah Legislature’s 2021 redistricting process.
While it’s a significant ruling, the fight — which could have major implications for Utah’s 2026 congressional boundaries and future voter initiatives — isn’t over yet. The case now goes back to Third District Court for a trial.
In a unanimous opinion posted on the court’s website Thursday morning ahead of its anticipated 10 a.m. publication, the Utah Supreme Court reversed a district court’s decision to dismiss part of the League of Women Voters of Utah’s lawsuit. The League argued that the Utah Legislature violated Utahns’ constitutional right to alter and reform their government when lawmakers repealed and replaced Proposition 4, the citizen-driven ballot initiative to enact an independent commission to draw Utah’s new boundaries in the 2021 redistricting process.
The League of Women Voters — along with the group Mormon Women for Ethical Government and individual Salt Lake County residents who alleged they were disenfranchised by unlawful gerrymandering — have claimed the Utah Legislature overstepped when it repealed and replaced the group Better Boundaries’ voter-approved 2018 initiative that outlined a process for adopting independently-drawn maps.
A Third District Court judge later dismissed that claim. But the Utah Supreme Court determined on Thursday that it “erred” in doing so.
“We hold that the people’s right to alter or reform the government through an initiative is constitutionally protected from government infringement, including legislative amendment, repeal, or replacement of the initiative in a manner that impairs the reform enacted by the people,” Justice Paige Petersen wrote in the opinion. “Thus, an alleged violation of the people’s exercise of these rights presents a legally cognizable claim on which relief may be granted.”
While Utah voters passed a ballot initiative in 2018 to create the independent commission to draw maps in Utah’s redistricting process — a process that occurs every 10 years — the Utah Legislature later passed a law, SB200, to turn that independent commission into merely an advisory role. Ultimately in 2021, the supermajority Republican-controlled Utah Legislature opted to ignore all of the maps that the independent commission created, and adopted maps it drew on its own.
The congressional map, the Utah League of Women Voters and other plaintiffs argued, was an “extreme partisan gerrymander” because it “cracked” Democratic voters, breaking them up and dispersing them among other congressional districts, “diluting their electoral strength and stifling their contrary viewpoints.”
If the plaintiffs can prove in Third District Court that SB200 violated Utahns constitutional rights, Proposition 4 would “become controlling law,” Petersen wrote.
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