Yet another legal battle flared up on Thursday in the fight over Utah's congressional map.
Utah Republicans have filed a "petition to the legislature," to repeal Utah's anti-gerrymandering constitutional mechanism known as Proposition 4 — which would let the GOP-dominated state legislature continue passing rigged congressional maps that chop up the Salt Lake City area to deny any representation to Democrats.
Under this so-called indirect initiative, if Republicans can gather around 70,000 signatures from voters within a month, it automatically triggers a vote in the legislature on whether to repeal Proposition 4.
But according to ABC4 News, a new lawsuit argued that this petition itself is unconstitutional.
"Lawyers for the League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government, and some individuals argue that the Utah Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in this case upheld Utahns’ constitutional right to alter and reform their government via initiative, and that Utah’s constitution only provides for one way to initiate a government reform — a majority vote of the people," said the report. "Thus, the suit alleges that an indirect initiative that was created by statute isn’t protected by the constitution, and therefore doesn’t trump those constitutional rights."
“The Legislature — backed by 4% of voters — cannot accomplish that unconstitutional repeal via the ‘indirect initiative,’ because that mechanism is a creature of statute with no power to overcome the constitutional right of the People to alter or reform their government through the sole constitutionally established initiative process: a majority vote of the People. The Legislature cannot enact a statute that affords it the ability to violate the People’s constitutional rights,” said the filing.
All of this was triggered because state courts ruled Utah's heavily gerrymandered congressional map an unconstitutional violation of Proposition 4, and ordered legislators to draw a new map. The legislature responded by creating a new map that makes two of the four GOP districts more competitive — while still refusing to draw a Democratic district — but that map has yet to be approved by the court overseeing the process.
In addition to the repeal petition, the GOP has also launched a petition that would call a direct vote on the remedial map the legislature passed. If that is successful, that map would be blocked from taking effect for the 2026 election, although it is unclear what map would then be used since courts have ruled the GOP's original map illegal.
