Utah’s Republican supermajority Legislature is tasked with redrawing the congressional map it adopted in 2021, but it appears that one of the chief complaints of that map will remain — at least in some form.
Salt Lake County will stay divided.
As of the 2020 census, the county boasted a population of around 1.2 million people and has favored Democrats in recent county-wide elections. In the map adopted four years ago, it was split among the state’s four congressional districts. The division created four safe seats for Republican candidates, eliminating a once hard-fought 4th Congressional District in which Republicans and Democrats had both won in the previous decade.
After years of legal wrangling over a 2018 voter-approved ballot initiative known as Proposition 4 that created an independent redistricting commission, Utah courts ruled in August that the 2021 maps violated the law and must be redrawn.
Utahns got their first look at new maps on Sept. 22, when the 10-member Legislative Redistricting Committee released five potential options.
All of the new maps still divide the state’s most populous county in some way.
To put it simply, that’s because Salt Lake County’s population is greater than that of a single congressional district. Utah’s four districts each contain an average of just over 875,000 people. According to state law, the population difference between each congressional district must not be more than 1% and the U.S. Constitution requires districts to be as equal in population as is practically possible.
The Legislature brought in national elections analyst Sean Trende to draw the maps. He told the committee that no matter what you do, the county needs to be split.
“It's not possible to comply, A, with the U.S. Constitutional requirements and, B, with the top-tier requirements of [Proposition 4], which is minimizing population deviations while still keeping Salt Lake County intact,” he said.
According to the committee, the new map will have to prioritize keeping cities intact before counties.
Another wrinkle in the process comes in the form of proposed legislation aimed at creating a “statistical method” for future redistricting. It would introduce what is called “partisan symmetry” into the redistricting process.
In essence, the bill would take the average of the partisan vote share in statewide races over the last three election cycles and compare it to a hypothetical 50-50 split between parties. With statewide races routinely dominated by Republican candidates, that could bake in a GOP advantage in any new map, ignore the Democratic stronghold in Salt Lake County, and not be considered a violation of Proposition 4.
For bill sponsor Sen. Brady Brammer, it’s an effort to provide clarity to the courts as the process plays out.
“We are following what we see in the judge's order as something that would be helpful to the court here,” he said. ”We're trying to do that in order to support exactly what Prop. 4 says, which is partisan symmetry.”
But for Democrats on the committee, that argument falls flat.
“The language of Prop. 4 is wide open about what we consider, and now we're going to try to, with this bill, constrain it to one single test,” said Rep. Doug Owens. “Are you concerned about the optics of that? Of saying the court says follow Prop. 4, and the first thing out of the chute is we're narrowing Prop. 4?”
Brammer answered that he was not concerned.
“The courts need workable tests, need workable methodologies to evaluate things,” he said. “Now, providing clarity as to what a workable test would be is not outside of the realm of what Prop. 4 said.”
Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla said elevating partisan symmetry to such a level was a “gigantic red flag” for her.
“It concerns me when we're saying, ‘Oh, we're running the test and we're getting a pass or fail grade,’ but we're only doing it on partisan bias, and you're now trying to codify partisan bias as the only test to use,” she said.
Committee members will pick one map from the five presented and could take action on Brammer’s proposed legislation at a Sept. 24 hearing. Following that will be a 10-day public comment period before the full Legislature is expected to vote on the new map in a special session Oct. 6.
The plaintiffs in the case challenging the 2021 map also have until Oct. 6 to submit their own version to the court. If the plaintiffs object to the lawmakers’ map, additional court hearings will be held between Oct. 17-28, with a new map needing to be in place by Nov. 10 for the state to have enough time to prepare for the 2026 election.
The public can view and comment on maps at https://redistricting.utah.gov/2025-legislative-redistricting/
