Two Republican congressional representatives — Reps. Burgess Owens and Celeste Maloy — and several county officials say a Utah judge’s selection of a new U.S. House map is unconstitutional and asked a federal court Monday to overturn her ruling.
The federal lawsuit argues that voters and the elected officials would suffer irreparable harm if the new congressional map chosen by 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson is allowed to remain in place. County commissioners and sheriffs from several counties, as well as the St. George mayor, joined the representatives in filing the suit.
The complaint contends the U.S. Constitution gives the power to draw political boundaries exclusively to state legislatures. They want the court to let the Legislature draw a new map or to allow the 2026 elections to go forward under the map that has been in place since 2021.
“In one stroke,” the plaintiffs argue in the complaint, “Judge Gibson’s decision has effectively displaced the elected representatives of the People of Utah and substituted her own preferred electoral arrangement, drafted by partisan litigants that openly sought to flip one of Utah’s four Republican congressional seats to a Democrat.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) U.S. Rep. Burgess Owens speaks at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025.
Voters are harmed, they argue, by not having a say in the boundaries that are chosen, and Maloy and Owens are hurt because the uncertainty over the districts leave them unsure where they should be preparing to campaign for reelection this year.
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, who oversees Utah’s elections, is named as the defendant in the lawsuit.
The new challenge comes as the Republican-led Legislature is asking the Utah Supreme Court to overturn Gibson’s decisions. Last Friday, lawyers for the Legislature filed a motion arguing the state constitution gives lawmakers the sole power to draw congressional and legislative boundaries and attempts to limit that power are, themselves, unconstitutional.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs questioning the legality of the original maps have asked the court to dismiss the Legislature’s challenge, contending it missed the deadline to ask the court to intervene.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy answers questions at a town hall in Salt Lake City on Thursday, March 20, 2025.
Elizabeth Rasmussen, executive director of the group Better Boundaries, said the federal lawsuit is the latest attempt — like past court filings, attacks on the courts and attempts to amend the Utah Constitution — to undo the will of the voters.
“Voters have been clear about what they want,” Rasmussen said. “At some point, lawmakers need to stop fighting the public and start listening.”
‘Partisan gerrymandering’
Monday’s filing by Owens, Maloy and county officials marks the first time that Utah’s redistricting battle has spilled into the federal courts — although Republican legislative leaders had promised for months that they would take their case there, even to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.
The federal courts, however, have largely avoided wading into partisan redistricting fights.
In a unanimous 1993 opinion in Growe v. Emison, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that federal courts must defer to state courts in redistricting matters. And in 2019, the court held in Rucho v. Common Cause that redistricting battles can’t be decided by federal courts and should be waged in state courts and through the political process.
That has meant that state courts have chosen maps in several states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — in addition to Utah.
Owens, in 2023, joined other Utah congressional representatives in signing onto a brief submitted in the lawsuit challenging their district boundaries, declaring, “There’s no constitutional right to be free from partisan gerrymandering.”
Former U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart, whose legal counsel included Maloy, also signed the brief. It was paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The initial lawsuit in Utah’s redistricting battle stems from the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative, where voters approved the creation of an independent redistricting commission and a set of neutral redistricting criteria, including a ban on gerrymandering — or manipulating the political districts to benefit one party and disadvantage another.
The Legislature largely gutted that initiative, but in 2024, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that letting the Legislature repeal a citizen initiative without a compelling reason would make the citizens’ initiative process meaningless.
The high court sent it back to Gibson, who, last year, voided the congressional boundaries adopted by the Legislature in 2021 and directed lawmakers to draw a map that complied with the Better Boundaries criteria.
The second attempt fared no better. Gibson ruled it was also a partisan gerrymander and chose to impose a map drawn by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit — a map that creates a Democratic-leaning district in Salt Lake County.
New justices
The Legislature has reacted with outrage, passing a resolution condemning what it has labeled as the courts’ activism, as well as stripping the Supreme Court justices of the ability to choose their chief justice and instead giving that power to the governor.
On Saturday, Gov. Spencer Cox signed into law a bill adding two justices to the Supreme Court. Those new justices will be nominated by Cox and confirmed by the Republican-dominated Senate.
If neither the federal court nor the Utah Supreme Court intervenes, the map Gibson chose will be used in the 2026 midterm elections.
A Republican-backed organization, Utahns for Representative Government, is attempting to gather signatures to put a new initiative on the 2026 ballot to repeal the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative and restore the Legislature’s ability to gerrymander.
As of Monday, and after months of seeking support, the group had collected 65,977 of the 140,748 signatures it needs to put the issue on the 2026 ballot. They have until Feb. 15 to submit the remaining signatures.