Utah Map ‘Unduly Favors Republicans,’ Claims New Filing Challenging GOP’s Two-Pronged Gerrymander Scheme

Several pro-voting groups asked a court Monday to block Utah Republican’s audacious new GOP law designed to make it harder to strike down the state’s new gerrymander, arguing it violates the state constitution. 

Utah lawmakers passed a new gerrymandered congressional map Monday, which the pro-voting groups said in a legal filing “unduly favors Republicans.” 

In 2018, Utah voters approved Proposition 4 — a ballot measure to create an independent redistricting commission to draw fair maps. But the Republicans passed legislation aiming to repeal Prop 4 in 2020 and drew a gerrymandered map. 

Several voters and pro-voting groups — including the League of Women Voters of Utah and the Mormon Women for Ethical Government — filed a lawsuit challenging the legislature’s proposed map. After a prolonged legal battle, the Utah Supreme Court upheld Prop 4, struck down the gerrymander, and ordered lawmakers to draw a new map that complied with the anti-gerrymandering law. 

On Monday, Republicans in the Utah legislature passed their new, court-ordered map. But the pro-voting groups immediately filed an amended complaint, alleging that the map “purposefully and unduly favors Republicans and disfavors Democrats in violation of Proposition 4’s prohibition on partisan favoritism.” 

The complaint alleges that the GOP’s map was not drawn with the standards of Prop 4 in mind, but rather by tests written into a “partisan bias” bill that Republicans swiftly approved hours before ushering in their new map. 

The complaint challenges the constitutionality of Senate Bill 1011, which was introduced by Sen. Brady Brammer (R), and was framed as a check on partisan bias — but it actually reverse-engineers the standards for testing to see if a map would violate Prop 4. The result allows Utah Republicans to rig the process of determining whether or not a map is politically biased — which voting rights advocates said weakens Prop 4. 

Under S.B. 1011, any proposed congressional map would have to pass three specific tests to ensure they’re “fair” — but the tests were developed to give the GOP an advantage. 

In one test, for example, each congressional district would have a partisan vote share roughly in line with statewide election results over the last 12 years, in which the GOP has consistently won by comfortable margins. 

Another one of S.B. 1011’s tests requires comparing a proposed map to an “ensemble” map created via computer simulation, to similarly ensure it corresponded to statewide results. GOP lawmakers would control the process, including the data and metrics used to create the simulation.

“By prohibiting an ensemble from being filtered to exclude maps that violate Proposition 4’s neutral criteria, S.B. 1011 renders any ensemble analysis useless for determining partisan purpose,” the pro-voting groups explain in their amended complaint. 

The pro-voting groups also submitted two Prop 4-compliant maps for the court to consider in place of the legislature’s map, as part of the remedial process the court laid out when they struck down the legislature’s original maps.