In the final minutes before a Nov. 10 deadline, a Utah judge approved a new congressional map that gives Democrats a strong chance at flipping a U.S. House seat in 2026. And it isn’t the map that Republican state lawmakers wanted.
The judge ruled that the state Legislature hadn’t complied with Proposition 4, which bans partisan gerrymandering, and so she couldn’t approve their preferred map. She went with one of the plaintiffs’ maps.
This was a highly-anticipated decision after Utah Third District Judge Dianna Gibson threw out the state’s map in August. Utah’s House delegation is currently made up of four Republicans.
In her opinion late Monday night she wrote, “based on the evidence presented, the Court finds that Map C [the Legislature’s map] was drawn with the purpose to favor Republicans.”
She agreed with the plaintiffs that the Legislature’s proposal was an “extreme partisan outlier.”
“In short, Map C does not comply with Utah law,” Gibson wrote.
In her ruling, Gibson also stopped a recent law that establishes three tests to determine whether a congressional map is fair. Plaintiffs argued the specific tests weren’t appropriate in states like Utah, where one party dominates statewide elections and produces paradoxical results that favor Republicans. Gibson agreed and said the law impairs Prop 4.
“Scholars have recognized this effect as the ‘Utah paradox’ one that is known to be gameable and the reason why partisan actors in Utah would opt to use partisan bias as their metric to assess congressional plans,” Gibson wrote.
“S.B. 1011's partisan bias test structurally mandates partisan favoritism for Republicans under Utah's current electoral conditions and political geography.”
The Lt. Governor’s Office said it needed a map to be finalized by Nov. 10 at the latest in order to be prepared for the 2026 midterms. But the decision could be appealed, and the redistricting legal saga is expected to continue in some form.
The decision comes after months of uncertainty. In August, Gibson ruled lawmakers had unconstitutionally bypassed Proposition 4, the 2018 citizen-approved ballot initiative that codified a ban on gerrymandering and other redistricting standards, to create their map. Therefore, the map was void.
That set off a scramble that coincidentally happened in the middle of a nationwide redistricting race spurred by President Donald Trump. This summer, Trump prompted Republicans in Texas to redistrict to help win more seats for their party. Democrats in California responded with their own plans. And other states have joined the race. Usually, states redistrict early in the decade after the national census. Currently, Republicans hold the majority in the House by just a few seats, and Trump has said maintaining that is key to continuing his agenda.
Utah’s redistricting fight is separate and the result of a lawsuit that has been going on for years. The League of Women Voters of Utah, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and a handful of Utah voters sued the Legislature in 2022.
Gibson had before her one map submitted by the heavily Republican legislature and two from plaintiffs in the lawsuit. According to experts who testified in the case, the lawmakers’ version had four districts favoring Republicans though not by nearly as much as the current map. The plaintiffs’ maps each had a district leaning Democratic.
After wading through two days of long, technical hearings with expert witnesses and thousands of pages of reports and arguments, Gibson sided with the plaintiffs.
“The Court concludes that Map C was purposefully configured to favor the Republican party and to disfavor the Democratic Party in violation of Proposition 4,” Gibson wrote.
She said it violated Prop 4 for several reasons. She said the map had an unnecessary number of municipal and county splits. Plus, the Legislature’s hired mapmaker, Sean Trende, an election analyst for RealClearPolitics, had political data displayed on the screen while he was drawing the map.
Additionally, Gibson found “fundamental flaws” in Trende’s work,, which she said made his report unreliable.
But the crux of her reasoning for voiding the Legislature’s pick was that it “unduly and purposefully” favored Republicans, violating Prop 4’s explicit ban on partisan gerrymandering
The old map created by lawmakers after the 2020 census had four safe Republican U.S. House seats. It also split Salt Lake County, the bluest part of the state, up four ways. Now the state’s largest county is only divided between two districts.
The plaintiffs’ map that was selected, called Map 1, has a circle in the center with District 1 anchored in northern Salt Lake County. It has three Republican-favoring districts and one that leans Democratic, according to one of the plaintiffs’ experts and the Judge.
“There is no meaningful dispute that Map 1 adheres to all of Proposition 4's neutral criteria,” Gibson wrote. “With respect to partisanship, Map 1 does not exhibit partisan favoritism.”
With a map now selected, congressional hopefuls are expected to begin announcing their campaigns in the coming days and weeks. Democrat Ben McAdams, who served one term before losing to Republican Rep. Burgess Owens, has already told supporters he plans to launch his campaign Nov. 13.
In a statement right after midnight, state Democrats said they “feel a deep sense of hope and relief following Judge Gibson’s decision to adopt the plaintiffs’ Map 1. This is a win for every Utahn. We took an oath to serve the people of Utah, and fair representation is the truest measure of that promise.”
The backlash from Republicans was swift. Rep. Matt McPherson quickly took to social media and said, “I have opened a bill to file articles of impeachment against Judge Gibson for gross abuse of power, violating the separation of powers and failing to uphold her oath of office to the Utah Constitution.”
Gibson made it clear in her ruling that she didn’t want to be in the position of choosing a map. But she clarified, “the Court is not weighing policy by picking a congressional map; the Court is merely applying Utah law.”
She said she chose Map 1 to remedy the problem before her and make sure Utah had a congressional map in 2026 that complied with both state and federal law.
Gibson wrote, “Without the requested relief, Plaintiffs and the people of Utah will again go through another election cycle with a congressional map that does not comply with the core reforms of Proposition 4 and continues to disregard the will of the people to prohibit partisan favoritism and partisan gerrymandering.”
