The long-running fight over the future of Utah’s congressional boundaries continued this week in the statehouse and the courthouse.
Republican lawmakers officially advanced a new map for the state’s congressional districts during a special legislative session Oct. 6 and passed a new districting law.
SB1011 set three bias tests into law that will govern future redistricting processes. Those include a partisan bias, ensemble analysis and medium-mean difference test.
According to KUER, Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Utah, sponsored the legislation to provide “objective measures or purposes of measuring whether or not a map is unduly partisan.”
In promoting it to fellow lawmakers, he said Proposition 4 — the 2018 voter-approved initiative to prohibit gerrymandering — asks that the best available data and scientific methods be used to make sure a map doesn't favor any political party.
David Reymann, an attorney for the Utah League of Women Voters in the gerrymandering lawsuit, agrees with Prop 4’s tenets. But on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Friday, Oct.10, he said the tests don’t make sense for Utah.
“What the legislature did in Sen. Brammer's bill is cherry-pick three tests that make no sense for Utah and that actually require the legislature to pass a map that has maximum partisan advantage for Republicans,” he said.
Reymann said the law is rigged because the tests are meant for states that have a 50-50 Republican to Democrat vote share. But Utah has always been majority Republican.
Congressional district maps are typically redrawn every 10 years following the U.S. census. Proposition 4 established an independent commission to do that work, but lawmakers ignored it and drew their own, triggering a lawsuit.
Utah legislators were forced to redraw the state’s congressional district map after a judge said in August that it didn’t comply with Prop 4.
The map lawmakers approved this week, along with two from the commission, has been submitted to 3rd District Court Judge Dianna Gibson for review.
The maps put forth by the independent redistricting commission, Reymann said, would fail SB1011’s tests, while the new map from Republican lawmakers would pass.
“The current gerrymandered map that we've been living under for the past five years, which is one of the most extreme partisan gerrymandered maps anywhere in the country in history, that map would pass Sen. Brammer's test with flying colors and say that it was unbiased,” Reymann said.
A hearing to decide which map will be instated is set for Oct. 23.
Reymann and other attorneys representing plaintiffs in the case against the Legislature have asked Gibson to pause the new law so its tests can’t be used to select a new map.
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson has said a map must be in place by Nov. 10 so it can be used in the 2026 midterms.
