To the tune of “Jingle Bells,” more than 100 supporters of anti-gerrymandering efforts in Utah gathered outside the House and Senate chambers on Tuesday night and sang: “Hear our voice; hear our voice; hear us as we say: Don’t ignore the voters ’cause we’re fighting back today.”
While holding signs that read “Gerrymandering is naughty” and “Make elections fair again,” the protesters’ singing echoed throughout the Utah Capitol’s rotunda as lawmakers gaveled in for a special session largely focused on facilitating the Republican-controlled Legislature’s legal fight against the state’s court-ordered redistricting process.
The legal battle over drawing the state’s electoral boundaries has resulted in a congressional map that created a single Democratic-leaning district and three heavily Republican districts.
During Tuesday’s special session, the Legislature passed a series of bills aimed at creating a window of time to allow for a different congressional map to be put in place ahead of the 2026 elections if they’re able to successfully appeal the case to the Utah Supreme Court in coming months.
In addition to approving legislation to delay congressional candidate filing deadlines and change court rules to ensure lawmakers’ appeal goes directly and quickly to the Utah Supreme Court, the Legislature also passed a scathing resolution that strongly condemned the courts’ actions in the redistricting case.
The resolution’s sponsor, House Majority Leader Casey Snider, R-Paradise, said on the House floor that the court’s handling of the case has damaged trust in the institution.
“I am afraid that I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them they can trust this judiciary any longer,” Snider said. “The court has done this to themselves. The reputation that they have lost and now tarnished they have done and lost by themselves.”
The resolution — which isn’t a binding law but rather a legislative measure to send a message — says the Legislature “rejects the court-ordered, special interest groups’ map and any map that does not reflect the will of the people through their elected legislators.” It adds that the Legislature “urges the judicial branch to safeguard and follow the text of the Utah Constitution.”
In their ongoing redistricting fight, Republican Utah lawmakers have accused 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson of violating the Utah Constitution when she picked a map that was drawn by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and not adopted by the Legislature, which they argue has the sole authority to redistrict under the Utah Constitution.
But Gibson, in a legal analysis filed Friday, addressed those criticisms, writing the remedial process she ordered and the court’s authority in the matter “is firmly rooted in both federal and state court precedent.”
“While a state court’s role in redistricting is new to Utah, this judicial function is neither new nor novel,” Gibson wrote. “It is well settled that when the political branches fail to enact lawful electoral maps, the judiciary’s duty to provide an effective remedy is not discretionary.”
Instead, Gibson wrote the courts have a “fundamental obligation to uphold constitutional rights and to ensure a lawful electoral map is in place, including by adopting one proposed by a party in the proceedings.”
Read the full report at UtahNewsDispatch.com.
