Utah Redistricting Fight: McAdams Supports Judge's Map

Former Utah Democratic Congressman Ben McAdams has waded into the state’s redistricting brawl, filing an amicus brief that urges a federal court to leave in place the judge-ordered congressional map for the 2026 midterms. His message: it’s too late to blow up the lines again.

Reps. Celeste Maloy and Burgess Owens, along with a coalition of Republican county commissioners, filed suit in federal court earlier this month seeking to block the map, known as “Map 1,” put in place by Third District Judge Dianna Gibson.

On Tuesday, McAdams filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that it’s too late in the 2026 electoral cycle to change the congressional map again. Doing so would unfairly disrupt voters and campaigns that are already relying on the current lines. He casts the GOP lawsuit as a recipe for confusion.

“(Gibson’s) Order established the operative boundaries for the 2026 election cycle. Since then, every candidate has had notice of the congressional districts as defined by Map 1 and has had to start campaigning from an even playing field,” McAdams’s filing reads.

McAdams says his team has raised about $955,000 since December 2025 and spent over $200,000. He’s hired six full-time staff and consultants and leased office space. His campaign qualified for the ballot last week by collecting the required 7,000 signatures using both volunteers and paid signature gatherers.

It’s not just about campaign spending, according to McAdams. Blocking Map 1 would also trample on the rights of the volunteers who are helping his campaign.

“The campaign volunteers, donors, delegates and supporters who, upon reliance that the CD1 (Utah’s 1st Congressional District) boundary was conclusively set, have already exercised their First Amendment right to participate in the political process. Efforts that would be effectively nullified and suppressed if Plaintiffs’ motion is granted.”

Last August, Gibson ruled the GOP-controlled Utah Legislature unconstitutionally repealed Prop. 4—the 2018 ballot initiative approved by voters that created an independent redistricting commission and banned gerrymandering. She also threw out the 2021 congressional map approved by lawmakers that resulted from the repeal of Prop. 4.

In November, Gibson rejected the replacement map approved by lawmakers and put in place Map 1, which was drawn by the plaintiffs in the case. That map creates a Democratic-leaning district centered on Salt Lake County. There are seven other Democrats running for the nomination in that district.

In their lawsuit, Owens and Maloy claim that Gibson overstepped her constitutional authority by imposing the plaintiffs’ map, arguing that a judge can block an unlawful map, but the power to draw a new map belongs to the Utah Legislature.

They also make a similar argument to McAdams, that uncertainty about which map will be in place for the 2026 election has had a negative impact on their campaigns. However, they claim that they planned to run for re-election using the 2021 map, then started preparing to use the remedial map from the Utah Legislature, but were blindsided when Gibson picked the plaintiffs’ map. In other words, both sides say the whiplash hurts them—just for opposite reasons.

Last week the Utah Legislature, which is also appealing Gibson’s ruling to the Utah Supreme Court, filed an amicus brief supporting Maloy and Owens’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking the maps, allowing the state to use the 2021 Congressional map in the 2026 election while the court fight plays out.

The first hearing in the case is set for Wednesday morning in Salt Lake City.