Republican legislators have said over and over they would appeal a judge’s decisions that junked the state’s previous congressional boundaries and made them draw another map, which that judge also rejected.
They even staged a news conference earlier this month to drive home their anger and convened a special session to buy time so they could appeal.
So why — more than four months after the judge’s initial ruling — hasn’t the Legislature taken their arguments to the Utah Supreme Court?
Even 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson, who is presiding over the case, seemed puzzled by their failure to act.
“Every Utah voter, every Utah congressional candidate and arguably every Utah citizen is impacted by this case,” Gibson wrote in a decision issued late Friday. “While it was the legislative defendants’ duty to seek appellate review of these decisions as soon as possible (if in fact that is what they wanted), they have offered no legitimate explanation for failing to do so when they had a chance.”
Gibson said that the Legislature could have appealed at any time since her initial Aug. 25 ruling directing lawmakers to draw a new congressional map, or her Nov. 10 decision rejecting that new map and choosing another — one that creates a Democratic-leaning district in Salt Lake County.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Plaintiff Malcom Reid testifies during a hearing for congressional redistricting maps before Judge Diana Gibson in 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City in October.
Attorneys for the Legislature never did that. So Gibson, at the Legislature’s request, removed any doubt that they could appeal to the state Supreme Court by “certifying” the issue for appeal. That gave the lawmakers’ lawyers explicit permission to appeal her decision to void the Legislature’s map to the state’s high court.
It is, according to Gibson’s decision, the first time a court has taken such an action.
“Until there is a final decision on these legal issues from our Supreme Court,” Gibson wrote, “there will be a cloud on Utah’s congressional elections.”
The justices should decide if the Legislature has complete authority over redistricting, she wrote, or if it can be constrained by the people through a voter initiative.
“There is no reason,” Gibson added, “to delay bringing some finality on these important issues to the people of Utah.”
Now the ball is in the Republican Legislature’s court.
In her Aug. 25 ruling, Gibson found — based on a unanimous decision last year by the Supreme Court — that the Legislature unconstitutionally gutted the voter-passed 2018 Better Boundaries ballot initiative that banned partisan gerrymandering and ruled that the map Republican lawmakers put in place in 2021 was void.
Since then, GOP legislative leaders have criticized it as judicial activism and said they would appeal. Last month, two weeks after Gibson enacted a map with Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County district, dozens of Republican lawmakers held a news conference and vowed to appeal.
“We cannot let unchecked initiatives turn Utah into California,” said Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, left, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, hold a news conference at the Utah Capitol in November.
Earlier this month, Gov. Spencer Cox called the Legislature into a special session to push back the filing deadlines for congressional candidates to give Republicans more time to appeal Gibson’s decisions.
The Supreme Court — consisting entirely of Republican appointees — has repeatedly ruled against the Legislature in the gerrymandering case, including decisions that found the repeal of the Better Boundaries initiative unconstitutional, voiding an attempted constitutional amendment to overturn the court’s ruling and rejecting earlier appeals from the Legislature.
Now, with the path cleared — assuming it was not clear before — for an appeal, the next move will be up to the Legislature.
The Utah Republican Party, meanwhile, is gathering signatures to try to put an initiative on the 2026 ballot that would repeal the ban on partisan gerrymandering. As of Friday, the party had more than 20,000 verified signatures, needing more than 119,000 more.
GOP Chair Rob Axson estimated earlier in the week that the party had gathered about half the signatures it needs and is submitting them to clerks for validation.
If that target is reached, voters will decide next year whether to repeal the ban on gerrymandering, which would let the Republican-dominated Legislature enact a map it chooses without the same intervention by the courts.