Utah GOP Gov. Spencer Cox supports appealing a court order installing new congressional maps in the state that would help Democrats, he announced Tuesday.
Utah judge Dianna Gibson late Monday night rejected a Republican-passed redistricting plan and instead approved a new map that would likely deliver one of Utah’s four seats to Democrats.
In a Tuesday post on X, Cox said he “fully supports” the Republican-controlled legislature’s plan to appeal the decision.
“The Utah Constitution clearly states that it is the responsibility of the Legislature to divide the state into congressional districts,” Cox wrote. “While I respect the Court’s role in our system, no judge, and certainly no advocacy group, can usurp that constitutional authority.”
Gibson’s decision is the latest episode in a yearslong redistricting saga in Utah. In 2018, Utah voters passed Proposition 4, a ballot initiative that created an independent commission to draw the state’s maps. In 2020, however, the state legislature passed a law which reduced the redistricting commission to an advisory role, and went on to draw a map with four safely Republican seats.
Gibson ordered the state legislature in late August to redraw the maps, saying the current map failed to comply with the 2018 ballot measure. The Republican-controlled legislature passed a map in October with four red seats, which Cox signed into law. Gibson rejected that map on Monday, saying it “fails to abide by and conform with the requirements” of Proposition 4.
Cox’s lieutenant governor, Deidre Henderson, said she would comply with the judge’s order and “immediately begin the process of implementing Plaintiff’s Map 1 unless otherwise ordered by an appeals court,” she wrote on X. She later clarified that the process of finalizing new boundaries “will take weeks of meticulous work,” and thus requires state officials to begin implementing the new map immediately before candidate filing in January.
Utah Rep. Matt MacPherson announced early Tuesday morning he is pushing to file articles of impeachment against Gibson “for gross abuse of power, violating the separation of powers and failing to uphold her oath of office to the Utah Constitution.”
In a joint statement Tuesday, Utah Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz blasted Gibson’s ruling as “deeply disappointing.”
“Nothing in Utah’s Constitution gives the courts authority to impose maps designed by private groups,” they wrote.
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