Utah voters who challenged political boundaries drawn by the Legislature celebrated last week after the state’s high court gave them a win, ruling that the Utah Constitution guarantees citizens the right to change their government through ballot initiatives.
Lawmakers overstepped their authority, the Utah Supreme Court ruled, when they rewrote a voter-appoved plan and instead drew their own maps that split Salt Lake County — the most liberal and populous county in the state — into four different congressional districts.
But the case is still far from over. Here is what’s likely to happen next in this alleged gerrymandering case.
What was at stake?
In 2018, Utah voters narrowly approved Proposition 4, establishing an independent commission to redraw Utah’s political boundaries during the once-a-decade redistricting process. In 2020, Utah lawmakers rewrote the law, shifting the commission to an advisory role.
The dispute stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and a group of Salt Lake County voters who contended that, by splitting the county into four districts, the Republican-dominated Legislature effectively deprived county residents of a meaningful vote and a voice in Congress.
The plaintiffs alleged the changes enacted by the Legislature amounted to an unconstitutional repeal of the ballot initiative. Third District Court Judge Dianna Gibson dismissed that claim, ruling that the Legislature has the right to alter any voter-approved law.
They then appealed to the Utah Supreme Court, who ruled last week that Utah’s Constitution grants the citizens of the state the political power to reshape its government, a guarantee that is made meaningless if any ballot measure that passes can be undone by the Legislature.
What happens next?
It’s possible that attorneys for the Legislature will ask the state supreme court for a rehearing over these next two weeks, said David Reymann, one of the lawyers representing the group of Utahns who sued. But, he added Friday, the high court rarely grants those.
If that doesn’t happen, lawyers will wait about a month for the Utah Supreme Court to issue the formal order that sends the case back down to the district court. Then the litigation will continue.
Who is the judge who will hear the case?
Gibson has presided over the case since it was filed in 2022, and it will go back to her courtroom now. There is a possibility she could step aside and recuse herself from the litigation, since the Utah Supreme Court overturned her previous ruling. But there is no requirement to do so, and judges generally don’t leave cases at that point.
Gibson has been on the bench since January 2019, after she was appointed by Gov. Gary Herbert. She earned both her bachelor’s and law degrees at the University of Utah, according to her online biography.
She was born in Hong Kong, according to Bar & Bench, a publication of the Salt Lake County Bar Association, and moved to Utah because her mother met and ultimately married a Navy serviceman from Price. Her parents “were extremely hard workers who made numerous sacrifices to provide for their family,” writer Ruth Hackford-Peer, an attorney and adjunct U. law professor, reported.
After Gibson was confirmed, her parents attended her ceremony at the Capitol “and realized that the last time they were in the building, they were working as janitors who cleaned the offices,” Hackford-Peer wrote. “You can imagine how proud her parents are to see their oldest child become a judge.”
Gibson had previously clerked at the Utah Court of Appeals, litigated cases at Parsons Behle & Latimer, worked as counsel for Alliant Techsystems Inc. and later as vice president and general counsel at Vista Outdoor Inc.
On the bench, she has handled a mix of criminal and civil cases, from challenges to a concert scheduled early in the pandemic and a Tooele County gravel operation to murder and drug cases, while generally based in Tooele.
What will the judge be ruling on now?
The Utah Supreme Court sent the case back to Gibson to make a determination about whether the Legislature usurped the will of the people when it passed SB200 in 2020.
The new law gutted much of the voter-approved Proposition 4, the Better Boundaries initiative, which prohibited partisan gerrymandering and imposed other restrictions on the Legislature’s redistricting process.
Reymann explained that his clients made five separate claims in the case, four of which are related to whether the redistricting was constitutional. Gibson had ruled that those four claims could move forward but the state appealed, and now they remain pending with the Utah Supreme Court.
The issue that the Utah Supreme Court ruled on was the remaining claim, which questioned whether the Legislature could rewrite a ballot initiative. Gibson ruled in favor of the Legislature on that point and dismissed that claim.
Now that the high court has revived it, attorneys for the Legislature will have to show that SB200 can pass a “strict scrutiny” standard — meaning the state will have to show there is a compelling reason to pass the law and that it was done in the narrowest way possible.
So the only question Gibson will need to answer, Reymann said, is: “Did they legitimately repeal Proposition 4 under the appropriate level of scrutiny that the Supreme Court set out?”
How long will this all take?
This lawsuit is far from over. If Gibson rules that the Legislature met the “strict scrutiny” standard, resolving that challenge, the Utah Supreme Court will then address the four constitutional claims in the lawsuit, Reymann said.
If the district judge instead sides with the plaintiffs, the Legislature will be forced back to the drawing board to adopt new maps — but this time, maps that comply with the initiative’s ban on partisan gerrymandering and requirements that districts be contiguous and respect county boundaries.
It’s also possible that attorneys for the Legislature could appeal the final decision, if it doesn’t go in their favor.
Reymann said he couldn’t estimate how long it will take before the lawsuit comes to a close.
“I really just don’t know whether it will be resolved by the 2026 election,” Reymann said. “But that’s definitely our goal, to get a new map in place by November 2025, so that we don’t have to live through another election or congressional election cycle with these districts.”
