Utah is using a new congressional map after courts concluded that the legislature had circumvented standards approved by voters in a 2018 anti-gerrymandering initiative. The court-selected map creates a Democratic-leaning Salt Lake-area district and changes the state’s prior four-district configuration. The dispute concerns voter initiatives, legislative authority, judicial remedies, partisan fairness, and how long a court-imposed map should remain in place. Gerrymandering is drawing election districts to advantage a party or political group rather than applying neutral representational criteria. Voters approved a mapmaking reform. Legislators should not be able to erase it, but judges also should not become Utah’s permanent mapmakers.
Who should control Utah’s congressional maps after lawmakers bypassed voter-approved standards?