In a unanimous decision, the Utah Supreme Court decided Thursday that Utah citizens have a constitutional right to reform their government in response to past redistricting efforts to divide Salt Lake City into four congressional districts, resulting in Republicans winning by a large margin.

The Utah League of Women Voters alleged that the majority party in the Salt Lake City Legislature has a history of “cracking” the districts. This means that voters for other parties are divided among multiple districts, so they cannot achieve a majority vote in any of the area districts.

The Utah League of Womens Voters cite the upset of Democratic Representative Jim Matheson in 2000 and 2010, when the map of the Salt Lake City district was redrawn into three areas that were combined with rural Utah voters, instead of allowing Salt Lake City it’s own single district.

The redistricting reform was achieved by invoking Article 1, section 2 of the Utah Constitution to return voting power to the people of Utah, which states the people have the right to reform their government as the public welfare may require.

Under The Citizen Initiative to Reform Redistricting and Prohibit Partisan Gerrymandering, which the Utah League of Women’s Voters passed in 2018, they sought to minimize the division of counties in Legislative districts, create districts that reflect geography and neighborhoods, and maximize agreement of boundaries between districts. They also made the Utah Independent Redistricting Commission draw the districts and recommend them to the Legislature, which would enact them without amendment or reject them with an explanation of the rationale.

In 2021, the Legislature created the Legislature Redistricting Committee that ignored the findings of the Utah Independent Redistricting Commission, primarily because under S.B. 200, the Citizen Initiative to Reform Redistricting and Prohibit Partisan Gerrymandering was repealed. The Commission’s role was weakened due to the loss of the Legislature’s voting mechanism, the ban on gerrymandering was weakened, the right to appeal the district maps was weakened, and there was little transparency for rejections of the maps.

The Utah Supreme Court held that Utah residents’ ability to alter and reform their government needs to be free from undue government burden, regardless of the Legislature’s ability to repeal any statute.

The Utah League of Women Voters lawsuit to challenge the right to gerrymandering will proceed in District Court.