Republican lawmakers picked their preferred congressional redistricting map. See what district you’d be in.

Utah Republican lawmakers pushed through a new congressional map — drawn under protest due to a court’s order — that would give the GOP an advantage in all four of the state’s U.S. House districts, but also gives the minority Democrats at least a fighting chance in one competitive district.

The newly adopted map creates an east-west split of Salt Lake County, with the eastern portion of the county being combined with the northern part of Utah county and other counties to the east. The western half of Salt Lake County would be combined with Tooele County to create one of the four districts.

The map must still be approved by a judge before it can be implemented. But Republican lawmakers also approved legislation, sponsored by Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, to restrict what metrics the judge can use to determine if the maps are a partisan gerrymander or not, adopting a trio of tests Monday that are the sole criteria the courts can consider.

Hours after the governor signed the bill with the tests into law, the plaintiffs who had sued to block the original 2021 map filed a new challenge, arguing the new law was intended to ensure that only maps that favor Republicans could be enacted.

In their latest lawsuit, League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and a number of voters argue that the chosen tests don’t work well in Utah and essentially obliterate Proposition 4 — a 2018 voter-approved ballot initiative intended to ban maps that benefit one party to the detriment of another.

“Rather than comply with Proposition 4’s prohibition on partisan gerrymandering, the Legislature has rushed to amend the law to neuter that prohibition” with the new law, attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote. “Worse yet, it has changed Proposition 4 to require partisan gerrymandering in favor of the majority party in Utah — contrary to the major purpose behind the voters’ reform.”

An analysis of voting data by The Salt Lake Tribune reveals that, while all four of the new districts would favor Republicans, a Democrat would only be at a six-point disadvantage in the new eastern district that includes Salt Lake City and an 11-point disadvantage in the western district.

Last week, the Utah Republican Party formally endorsed the map — known as Option C — and encouraged members of the party to contact legislators and submit public comments supporting the boundaries. It prompted a torrent of comments, roughly a thousand over the course of just a few days, and accusations from Utah Democratic Party Chair Brian King that Republicans were politicizing the process.

In a perfunctory hearing Monday morning, the Legislative Redistricting Committee adopted Option C as its recommended map and sent it to the Legislature, which passed it Monday afternoon.

All Democrats in both chambers voted against the map, as did three House Republicans, Reps. Anthony Loubet, R-Kearns, Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, and Jim Dunnigan, R-Taylorsville. Two Republicans, Sens. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, and Heidi Balderree, R-Saratoga Springs, voted against the measure in the Senate.

Sen. Daniel Thatcher of West Valley City, a former Republican and now a member of the Utah Forward Party, also voted against the new map.

It now goes to the governor for a signature and then will be submitted to the court for review.

Court-imposed deadline

The rapid re-mapping allowed the Legislature to meet its deadline to submit a new map to Judge Dianna Gibson, who in August barred the existing boundaries from being used in the 2026 election, starting a scramble to redraw the maps.

Gibson ruled that the Legislature’s move to rescind the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative, also known as Proposition 4, was unconstitutional and its map had to be redrawn to comply with the ballot measure.

The voter-approved initiative sought to put guardrails on the redistricting process and to ban partisan gerrymandering. A group of plaintiffs sued after lawmakers effectively repealed it.

Gibson will decide later this month if the new map complies with the initiative and whether it will be used in the 2026 midterms. According to state election officials, the new map has to be in place by Nov. 10 in order to give county clerks time to prepare for the election.

Republican lawmakers made clear they were complying with the court’s order, but bristled at being compelled to do so.

“I just look at the process the courts have created ... and I would say it’s a joke. It’s a farce,” McCay said on the Senate floor Monday. “In a lot of ways, it is disrespecting to the voice of the people that elected these members of Legislature. ... The process that we have come up with, really with a gun to our head from the judiciary, is inappropriate.”

Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton, voiced a similar opinion saying, “This is not the way we want to be doing this.”

“We disagree with the court order and fully intend to appeal it to the Utah Supreme Court and, if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court at the appropriate time,” he said.

Sandall said that the map passed Monday will only take effect if the appeals are unsuccessful and the courts uphold Gibson’s decision.

Democratic Sen. Stephanie Pitcher said the boundaries struck down by the court split her Millcreek constituents into multiple districts, but the current map still splits Millcreek into two districts and divides the community.

And Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Millcreek, said blending urban and rural voters into the same district dilutes the representation that constituents receive.

In the House, Rep. Doug Owens, D-Millcreek, who served on the redistricting committee that recommended Option C, spoke out against the proposed new map and the process.

“Map C is, in fact, the least competitive of all those maps,” he said of the options the committee considered. “[This option] denies one party any real chance at ever having a competitive race, and it runs counter to the language in the statute that we are prohibited from unduly disadvantaging one party.”

Monday afternoon, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed two of their own proposed maps with the court, in case the judge opts to reject the Legislature’s plan.

One basically creates a “donut hole” district in most of the northern part of Salt Lake County and then creates northern, eastern and southwestern districts.

The other is not wildly dissimilar from Map C, creating an east-west split in Salt Lake County, although along different lines city lines than the Republican map.

Identifying gerrymandering

It will be up to Gibson to determine if the Legislature’s map passes muster — but Brammer’s bill that was signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox 70 minutes after it left the Senate could significantly limit Gibson’s discretion.

Previously, Proposition 4 said that the court can consider “the best available data and scientific and statistical methods, including measures of partisan symmetry,” without naming specific tests.

Brammer’s new law only allows three tests to be considered — the “partisan-symmetry test,” the “mean-median test,” and an “ensemble” test.

The tests are among many that political scientists have put forward to try to use statistical metrics to detect partisan bias. Brammer said the Legislature’s Map C complies with all three.

Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, previously proposed including the three tests (Brammer advocated for using just the partisan symmetry test) but on Monday argued that changing the rules at this point runs afoul of the voter-passed initiative.

“Altering Prop 4 would be in violation of Prop 4 and what those decisions have said,” she said. “[C]odifying any type of test is actually in violation of Prop 4.”

Senate Majority Assistant Whip Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, said the change in the message from Democrats had given him a “little bit of whiplash.” In Gibson’s opinion, McKell said, the judge invited the Legislature to define how to identify partisan bias, and that, he argued, is what the bill does.

House Majority Whip Rep. Candice Pierucci, R-Herriman, said that the Legislature is trying to defend its authority to “to continue drawing maps, as was intended by the founders of the state,” and putting the partisan tests in place strengthens the Legislature’s argument before the court.

But the plaintiffs argued in their new suit Monday that the three tests are a poor fit for Utah elections, given the limited number of districts and the overwhelming Republican majority. Taken together, they argued, the tests actually work to exclude competitive districts and encourage adoption of maps that create four safe Republican seats.

That effectively repeals Proposition 4, they argue, violating a decision last year by the Utah Supreme Court that said that the Legislature cannot undo citizen-passed initiatives and can only make changes to facilitate the implementation of the voters’ intent.

In a news release Monday afternoon after the Legislature adjourned, Democrats from both chambers expressed their opposition to Brammer’s bill and the new map.

“We remain hopeful that the Utah Third District Court will recognize that this approach does not align with the standards set by Utah voters when they passed Proposition 4,” the said.

Katharine Biele, president of the League of Women Voters of Utah, said Monday the litigation is necessary because the trio of tests “is not part of Proposition 4.”

“We are here to preserve Proposition 4 and make sure that the map that goes through complies with Proposition 4,” she said. “This map does not.”

The tussle in Utah comes during a national battle over redistricting, after Texas redrew its congressional maps mid-decade in an effort to gain five safe Republican seats in the state. California is retaliating by attempting to do the same to favor Democrats. Other states also may join the fray.

Republicans currently hold a six-seat majority in the U.S. House, with one recently elected Democrat waiting to be sworn in, cutting the margin to five. With such a narrow margin, the stakes are high for the redistricting push ahead of the midterm election that will decide control of the chamber.

Articles of impeachment?

As Brammer stood on the Senate floor ahead of casting a “yea” vote for the map, he sounded what some onlookers interpreted as a warning for the courts and Utah’s top election official if they adopt a map other than the one approved by lawmakers Monday.

“It would be a malfeasance in office,” Brammer declared, repeating the phrase for emphasis, “a malfeasance in office for a court to attempt to accept a map that has not been approved by the Legislature, or for the lieutenant governor to certify and use a map that has not been approved by the Legislature.”

The senator’s words were a direct quote from Utah’s impeachment code: " ... judicial officers shall be liable to impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors or malfeasance in office."

When asked during a news conference after the Legislature adjourned whether he intended to reference impeachment, Brammer deferred to the House of Representatives, which has the sole power to vote to bring such articles ahead of a Senate trial.

But, he said, “Whether malfeasance in office rises to the level of impeachment, that’s always a matter of debate. But it would not be within either the statutory or constitutional framework if a court or anyone else other than the Legislature were to attempt to adopt [a map].”

No state judge has been impeached by lawmakers. In 2003, the House voted 66-9 to begin an impeachment investigation into 4th District Judge Ray Harding Jr., who had been charged with drug possession. Harding resigned from the bench, pleaded guilty to the drug charges and was stripped of his law license by the Utah Supreme Court.

Current Speaker Mike Schultz has threatened multiple judges with impeachment since taking the helm of the House less than two years ago.

“I’ll just be very blunt,” Schultz said at the news conference, following Brammer’s remarks.

“The Legislature will do all we can to protect the power given to it in the constitution in Article 9. Nowhere in the constitution does it allow for a judge to be able to pick a map, and we will adamantly defend that to whatever means necessary,” he told reporters.