Utah judge picks plaintiffs' congressional map over one favored by GOP lawmakers

Source: KUER Salt Lake City, UT/NPR

Published November 11, 2025 at 1:13 AM MST


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.

Read more: https://www.kuer.org/politics-government/2025-11-11/utah-judge-picks-plaintiffs-congressional-map-over-one-favored-by-gop-lawmakers