They Called It Gerrymandering. Then a Judge Drew the Map.

My November opponent and her allies will make SB 200 a campaign issue this fall. That’s fine. I voted for it. I’m proud of it. And the full story is nothing like the one they’ll tell.

Let me give you the real history.

I was in that 2020 session. I heard the constitutional arguments firsthand, sat through the debate, and voted yes because it made complete sense to me. The Utah Constitution gives the Legislature the authority to draw districts. That is the law. Not a talking point, not a political preference. The law. And I believe deeply in what that means. I believe in all three branches of government and in how they are designed to work together. The Legislature makes law. The courts interpret it. The executive enforces it. That balance is not incidental to our republic. It is the whole point. When Prop 4 created a structure that could ultimately transfer the Legislature’s constitutional redistricting authority to an unelected commission and then to the courts, the Legislature had both the right and the obligation to defend its role. SB 200 was that defense. When one branch overreaches, the other branches have a duty to push back through every legitimate constitutional means available. That is not obstruction. That is the system working as designed.

What Prop 4 Actually Was

In 2018, Utah voters passed Proposition 4, also called “Better Boundaries,” by a margin of 50.3% to 49.7%. Less than one percent. It was one of the closest initiative votes in state history (1). The measure created an independent redistricting commission to recommend congressional and state legislative district maps to the Legislature. The Legislature would retain final authority over the maps, but Prop 4 set standards for how the commission and Legislature had to approach the process.

Worth noting: Prop 4 passed in the same election cycle as the medical marijuana and Medicaid expansion initiatives. Turnout that year was elevated specifically because of those two measures, which drew voters to the polls who might not otherwise have participated. That context matters when assessing the margin.

Prop 4’s proponents described it as a straightforward good-government reform. Critics, including the official arguments published in the Utah Voter Information Pamphlet, raised a different concern: that Prop 4 was deliberately designed to invite litigation and eventually result in courts drawing district boundaries rather than elected legislators. In hindsight, that concern proved prescient.

The Constitutional Problem No One Wants to Talk About

The Utah Constitution is explicit. It states that the Legislature “shall divide the state into congressional, legislative and other districts.” That is not ambiguous language. Redistricting authority in Utah belongs to the Legislature as a constitutional matter.

Prop 4, as originally written, created what the Legislature’s attorneys and legislators themselves described as a “constitutional conundrum.” The initiative didn’t just recommend a process. It imposed binding standards on the Legislature and created enforcement mechanisms, including broad standing for anyone with a Utah address to sue if they believed the maps didn’t comply. The Legislature’s concern was not that it wanted to gerrymander. The concern was that Prop 4 as written would set up a situation where unelected judges, not the Legislature, would ultimately draw the maps.

Senator Curtis Bramble, the bill’s Senate sponsor, said it plainly: “Better Boundaries had a vision and a goal they wanted to accomplish. The Legislature had a constitutional prerogative that we wanted to protect.”(2)

That is not a statement of bad faith toward voters. That is a statement of constitutional responsibility.

SB 200 Was a Negotiated Compromise, Not a Repeal

Here is the part the opposition will never tell you.

SB 200 was not dreamed up in a back room by Republican legislators trying to nullify a voter initiative. It was the product of more than a year of direct negotiations between the Legislature and Better Boundaries, the very organization that wrote and campaigned for Prop 4. Those negotiations were heated, broke down at least once, and ultimately produced a bill that Better Boundaries publicly and fully endorsed. (3)

Better Boundaries co-chairman Jeff Wright stood at a joint press conference with legislators when the bill was unveiled and said: “Not everybody got everything they wanted, but that’s the democratic process.” (4) Better Boundaries executive director Rebecca Chavez-Houck, herself a former Democratic state legislator, said the compromise maintained the core principles of Prop 4 and acknowledged that her organization conceded on the constitutional questions in order to preserve the commission. (5)

The House floor sponsor of SB 200 was Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, a Democrat from Holladay. House Minority Leader Brian King, also a Democrat, spoke in favor of the bill on the House floor, saying it maintained the “core of what we’re looking for” and represented “a significant improvement over the status quo.” (6)

The final House vote was 67 to 4. The Senate vote was 25 to 0. This was not a partisan power grab. It was one of the most broadly supported bills of that session.

I voted yes. I am not apologizing for it.

What SB 200 Actually Did

SB 200 preserved the independent redistricting commission created by Prop 4 and funded it with $1 million. It maintained requirements that the commission draw maps based on nonpartisan criteria. What it changed was this: it made the commission’s maps advisory to the Legislature rather than binding. It removed a requirement that the Legislature publicly explain its reasons for rejecting commission maps. And it adjusted the anti-gerrymandering language so that the standard applied to the commission’s internal rules rather than as a hard legal trigger for litigation.

To critics on the progressive left, those were significant walkbacks. To the Legislature and to Better Boundaries itself at the time, they were reasonable accommodations of a genuine constitutional tension. The Utah Constitution says the Legislature draws the maps. SB 200 tried to honor what voters wanted while not surrendering the Legislature’s constitutional authority to a commission or, ultimately, to the courts.

What Happened Next

The commission did its work after the 2020 census. It proposed maps. The Legislature largely set them aside and drew its own congressional map, dividing Salt Lake County among four congressional districts. Critics argued the map cracked Democratic-leaning voters across districts. Legislative leaders argued the maps followed population requirements and served communities that crossed county lines.

In 2022, the League of Women Voters and Mormon Women for Ethical Government sued. The case worked through the courts for years. In July 2024, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously ruled that voter-approved government reform initiatives carry special constitutional protection and that the Legislature’s modification of Prop 4 needed to meet a higher legal standard, known as strict scrutiny, to survive. (7) In August 2025, the trial court applied that framework and ruled SB 200 unconstitutional, reinstated Prop 4, and ordered new congressional maps for the 2026 elections.

The Legislature passed new maps in a special session. The court rejected those as well and implemented a plaintiff-drawn map creating one Democratic-leaning congressional district in Salt Lake County and three Republican-leaning districts elsewhere in the state.

My Position Today

As long as I hold public office I will follow the law as it stands. That is not the same thing as agreeing with every ruling. I believe in an independent judiciary. I believe in the separation of powers. I also believe this court went well beyond its proper constitutional role, and I am not alone in that view. House Speaker Mike Schultz and Senate President Stuart Adams issued a joint statement the day of the July 2024 ruling: “This is one of the worst outcomes we’ve ever seen from the Utah Supreme Court. Rather than reaching the self-evident answer, today the Court punted and made a new law about the initiative power, creating chaos and striking at the very heart of our republic.” (8) Governor Cox said publicly that he disagreed with the ruling as well. (9) The five justices who created this new doctrine were all appointed by Republican governors. This was not a partisan outcome that conservatives should simply accept as settled wisdom.

Consider what actually happened here. A judge in Salt Lake City, unelected and accountable to no voter in Utah, selected a congressional map for the entire state. No public hearings. No legislative debate. No vote by any representative of the people. The plaintiffs submitted a map drawn to produce a specific partisan outcome, and the judge chose it. The very groups that spent years accusing the Legislature of gerrymandering cheered when a court-drawn map created a safe Democratic district in Salt Lake County by design. That is gerrymandering. The only difference is who drew the lines. I have heard the word gerrymandering used as a weapon against the Legislature for years by people who apparently have no objection to it when a judge does the drawing. Utahns should be clear-eyed about what happened: the Legislature drew maps, was sued, and a court replaced those maps with different ones engineered to produce a different partisan result. That is not justice. It is the very thing the plaintiffs claimed to be fighting against, accomplished through a different branch.

The proper remedy for a court that overreaches is not to ignore the ruling. It is to use the constitutional tools available: legislative action, constitutional amendments, the appellate process, and ultimately the democratic process. The Legislature pursued all of those. It passed new maps. It attempted a constitutional amendment. It appealed at every level. When those efforts were exhausted, it complied. That is what the rule of law looks like, even when you believe the court got it wrong.

But here is what I will not accept: the suggestion that legislators who voted for SB 200 were acting in bad faith toward the people of Utah. That charge is simply false, and the historical record proves it. We worked with the people who wrote Prop 4. We negotiated for more than a year. When talks broke down, we came back to the table. We funded the commission. We let it do its work. A Democrat carried the bill on the House floor. Democrats voted for it. Better Boundaries endorsed it. The governor signed it. And the Legislature’s constitutional argument was serious enough that it took five years of litigation and two rounds of appeals to resolve.

What my opponents want to turn into a scandal is actually a story about how representative government is supposed to function: competing interests, genuine constitutional questions, good-faith negotiation, a bipartisan compromise, and a court that, in my view, went further than the constitution authorizes. Reasonable people can disagree about where that line is. I have been clear about where I stand.

Why This Matters for District 52

This entire fight has been about congressional redistricting, the four seats Utah sends to the U.S. House of Representatives. It has nothing to do with state legislative districts. District 52, the seat I hold and am asking you to let me continue holding, was not part of this lawsuit. My work in the Utah House has not been touched by any of these proceedings.

What my opponent is trying to do is take a complex, good-faith constitutional dispute about congressional maps and use it as a proxy argument against effective legislators who did their jobs thoughtfully. That is a political strategy, not a principled argument.

I have spent several years in the Utah House asking hard questions and voting my conscience. SB 200 was one of those votes, and it was not a difficult one. The constitutional argument was sound. The compromise was negotiated in good faith. Better Boundaries, the people who wrote Prop 4, agreed it was the right path forward. I voted yes because doing nothing was not an option and because the Legislature had a duty to resolve a genuine constitutional conflict rather than ignore it. The courts ultimately drew the line differently. I believe the got it wrong and exercised broad overreach. My role is to keep showing up, keep defending the Legislature’s place within our constitutional structure, and keep being straight with the people I represent about where I stand and why. That is what I have always done. It is what I will keep doing.

Rep. Cory Maloy represents House District 52, which covers Lehi west of I-15, a portion of American Fork, and a portion of Saratoga Springs. He chairs the House Business, Labor, and Commerce Committee.

Sources

1. Ballotpedia, “Utah Proposition 4, Independent Advisory Commission on Redistricting Initiative (2018).” ballotpedia.org/Utah_Proposition_4

2. Deseret News, “Better Boundaries, Legislature present compromise on redistricting,” February 27, 2020. deseret.com — Feb. 27, 2020

3. KSL.com, “Better Boundaries, Legislature present compromise on redistricting,” February 28, 2020. ksl.com/article/46723302

4. Deseret News, February 27, 2020. See note 2.

5. Salt Lake Tribune, “Anti-gerrymandering compromise garners unanimous support from Utah Senate,” March 4, 2020. sltrib.com — March 4, 2020

6. Deseret News, “Utah Legislature approves Better Boundaries deal,” March 11, 2020. deseret.com — March 11, 2020

7. Utah Supreme Court, League of Women Voters v. Utah State Legislature, July 11, 2024.

8. Utah News Dispatch, “Utah Supreme Court hands big win to plaintiffs in anti-gerrymandering lawsuit,” July 11, 2024. utahnewsdispatch.com — July 11, 2024

9. Utah News Dispatch, “Judge orders Utah Legislature to draw new congressional maps,” August 25, 2025. utahnewsdispatch.com — Aug. 25, 2025

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