A Utah judge has thrown out a new U.S. congressional map passed by the Republican-led legislature in favor of an alternative that appears likely to result in flipping one of the state’s four U.S. House seats to Democrats in next year’s midterms.
In a decision late on Monday night, District Judge Dianna Gibson called the legislative map an "extreme partisan outlier" that illegally gave Republicans an advantage. The Republican-drawn plan split Salt Lake County, where most of the state’s Democrats reside, in half. Gibson chose one of two alternative maps proposed by voting rights groups that had sued over the map, both of which created a Democratic-leaning district centered on Salt Lake County.
Her decision arrived amid a national battle over redistricting that began when Texas, acting at President Trump’s behest, redrew its congressional map to take aim at flipping five Democratic seats. In response, California voters last week overwhelmingly approved a new map in that state that targets five Republican incumbents.
Other Republican- and Democratic-led states have also either drawn new maps or are considering doing so. While manipulating district lines to benefit one party, known as gerrymandering, is not new, redistricting typically only takes place once a decade, when states are constitutionally mandated to redistrict based on the decennial U.S. Census. Read more from Joseph Ax.
