Posted on 11/11/2025 12:28:01 PM PST by Signalman
A Utah judge just handed Democrats a major win ahead of the 2026 midterms, tossing out a GOP-drawn congressional map and replacing it with one that carves out a new Democratic-leaning district in the deep-red state.
Utah District Judge Dianna Gibson ruled late Monday that the map approved by the Republican-controlled legislature “unduly favors Republicans and disfavors Democrats.” The ruling wipes out the current lines, which gave the GOP control of all four congressional districts.
The move marks the latest flashpoint in a coast-to-coast redistricting war, one pitting President Donald Trump and his Republican allies against Democrats fighting for control of the House.
Gibson’s decision stemmed from a lawsuit by the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government, who claimed the legislature’s map violated a 2018 voter-approved redistricting reform measure banning partisan gerrymandering. The new map, backed by the plaintiffs, keeps almost all of heavily blue Salt Lake County intact in one district — instead of slicing it into four Republican strongholds as the old map did.
Democrats cheered the ruling. “The DNC applauds the decision to choose a fair, impartial map that reflects the diversity and ideological makeup of the state,” said DNC Chair Ken Martin. “Utah Republicans gerrymandered the maps because they knew they were losing power in the state. Republicans doubled down when they chose to submit another gerrymandered map, but today, they were once again thwarted by impartial Courts.”
Martin added that “Democrats will continue to fight for fair maps in Utah, regardless of what Donald Trump and Utah Republicans try next.”
Republicans fumed, accusing Gibson of overstepping her authority. “Judge Gibson has once again exceeded the constitutional authority granted to Utah’s judiciary,” said state GOP Chair Robert Axson. “After stretching the law to justify taking control of redistricting, she has now rejected Map C — the only option that respected the Legislature’s constitutional role — and imposed a map of activists who are not accountable to Utahns.”
“This is not interpretation,” Axson blasted. “It is the arrogance of a judge playing King from the bench.”
The Utah ruling lands just days after California voters approved Proposition 50, which hands map-drawing power back to the Democrat-dominated legislature and is expected to yield five more blue seats. That move balances out Texas, where a new red map could add up to five GOP-leaning districts.
“California stepped up. Now, we are taking this fight across the country — helping Democrats in other states push back against Trump’s election rigging,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom told Fox News Digital last week.
Trump’s team has been aggressively pushing mid-decade redistricting in red states like Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio, part of a strategy to bulk up the GOP’s slim House majority heading into the 2026 midterms.
Democrats, meanwhile, are moving to redraw maps in Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia to protect their own turf. The battle lines are drawn — and with Utah’s ruling, the fight over who controls Congress just got even hotter.
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I’ve been saying right along....Win is won by “get out the votes” and pure mathematics.
Does she mean like all the Dem states like California where GOP voters have almost no seats despite voting due to the current gerrymandered CA districts?
This could be a good thing.
The same legal standard they're applying to Utah can be applied to blue states.
That’s the way it works.
To be appealed, overturned, and done.
Current gerrymandered crooked California:
“...Democrats in California won 83% of the seats off 61% of the vote (a pro-Democratic efficiency gap of 11%).”
” Democrats won their three new seats in 2024 by extremely narrow margins. A switch of just 8,833 votes out of 15 million cast statewide would have been enough to reverse the outcomes in all three.”
——Public Policy Institute of California.
Absent McCarthy’s arm-twisting in D.C. and with a powerless superminority in both chambers of the state Legislature, California Republicans appear headed for an era of obsolescence, at least for the next five years.
Proposition 50’s landslide win owes its success in part to the abject failure of a disarrayed No on 50 campaign low on funds and unable to keep up with the Yes side’s deluge of savvy advertising.
-—Local News Bay Area.
If Utah really pass a 2018 law that banned partisan redistricting, and if SLC was carved up into four districts to ensure that all four Utah seats were GOP....
Maybe the judge was right.
And again, the big "if" here was if Utah really did have such a law. I don't know whether or not that is true.
This lady judge will eventually follow the busloads of mini judges getting stuffed. It will take a bit of time in this case.
Only the legislature has that power.
We used to have sensible congressional districts in all 50 states. I believe it was the warren court that changed this. I was quite young at the time so I wasn’t paying a lot of attention but as I recall it was the one man one vote ruling that led to this crazy mess where rural regions basically lost representation to the cities. Somebody might be interested in researching this but at the moment I am disinclined.
State court applying state law, at the lowest level, so no precedential authority even in Utah.
I seem to remember Prop 187 had a landslide also...and IT was 2 years AFTER Clinton opened the flood gates.
Yes. Gerrymandering is one of the things almost all the American people do not want——but they are ignored.
Same as the old cable TV legislation held down where people paid far too much and didn’t want the absurdly low audience channels they had to pay for along with the 20 or so they ever watched. And Congress made the bills higher instead of lower. Lobbyists and cash payoffs were rampant.
And who wants the lousy red light camera computerized ticket systems? Only the cash hungry local places. One camera system company accidentally let a memo out: “Forget Adams intersection at Willow. You won’t make any money there.”
While the crooked politicians pretend “Oh, dear, we’re just looking out for safety.” While people plow into the car ahead of them which suddenly stops midway to try to avoid a camera ticket.
People (except for illegals and criminals on trial in courts) don’t get what they want.
This is textbook how empires fall.
The precedent is in defining who’s been harmed.
She’s not applying any legal principles except she doesn’t like the result.
Hasn’t the Supreme Court said that Federal Courts have no business in state elections or districting.
So this dimbulb judge ruled that partisan gerrymandering is wrong if it favors Republicans, but okie dokie if it favors democrats. What impartial logic!
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