Utah voters passed a bipartisan citizen initiative called Proposition 4 in 2018 meant to ensure district maps didn’t favor one party over another. The initiative created an independent redistricting commission that would decide how electoral districts are drawn instead of politicians. At the time, 66% of Summit County voters supported Prop 4 while only 38% did in Wasatch County.
But in 2020, lawmakers passed SB200, reversing restrictions on gerrymandering and stripped the redistricting commission’s authority over district maps.
Lawmakers then created their own district maps in 2021. Mark Gaber is an attorney for the Campaign Legal Center who argued the case against the state last year. He said the maps disregarded the commission's recommendations.
“They just, under a cloak of darkness one night, came up with their own pre-cooked map that split the county of Salt Lake into four pieces and disregarded entirely all of the work and all of the public input that happened as part of the commission process,” he said.
Mormon Women for Ethical Government, the League of Women Voters of Utah and some Salt Lake City voters then filed a lawsuit claiming the congressional map and repeal of Prop 4 violated Utah’s constitution.
A district court dismissed the claim, but the Utah Supreme Court has now ruled that was a mistake. Gaber said the lawmakers’ team argued the provision in Utah’s Bill of Rights stating the voters of Utah have the power to pass legislation through the initiative process was more a value than a right.
“They sort of cast that provision in the Bill of Rights as kind of, you know, puffery, doesn't really mean much. It's sort of values but not actual rights," he said. "And that instead, because the initiative had been legislation passed by the people, that the legislature could exercise its power to just repeal that, as it were, a statute that the legislature had passed. ”
Further, the lawmakers’ team argued the process was a sort of ping pong match where the Legislature and citizens can go back and forth on initiatives. But the Utah Supreme Court said this would not be a competitive match.
“If that's the way that this works, where the people could go through the arduous process of getting the tens of thousands of signatures they need across the state, you know, run a campaign, get the voters to support it and vote for it, and then the next moment the legislature comes into session, they can just repeal it,” Gaber said.
The case now goes back to Third District Court for the trial. The court must decide if the Utah Legislature violated Utahn’s rights when it passed SB200. Gaber said while it’s legal for the legislature to make corrections to a voter initiative or pass an additional law to make it easier to enforce, the Supreme Court’s ruling prevents lawmakers from changing the purpose of an initiative.
Gaber said he hopes the Third District Court will make a decision before 2026 as the result could have major implications for Utah’s 2026 congressional boundaries.
