Utahns for Representative Government (UFRG)—the Republican-led group pushing to repeal Prop. 4, Utah’s voter‑approved anti‑gerrymandering law—abruptly dropped its lawsuit aiming to stop the coordinated campaign urging voters to pull their names off the repeal petitions.
UFRG has gathered enough raw signatures to qualify the repeal on November’s ballot. Opponents, led by Better Boundaries and Utahns for Responsive Government (URG), are working to persuade signers to remove their signatures, which could keep the measure off the ballot.
In its now-abandoned suit, UFRG argued that opponents’ “signature‑removal kits”—mailers with pre‑filled forms and a prepaid return envelope to county clerks—broke the rules. The postage, UFRG said, was an illegal “payment” to induce removals, and the pre‑filled info meant voters weren’t acting on their own.
UFRG asked a judge to order clerks to toss any removal requests sent with those prefilled forms.
A Friday morning hearing in the case was suddenly cancelled after UFRG filed a motion to dismiss the suit. Utah GOP chair Rob Axson, who heads UFRG, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Better Boundaries Executive Director Elizabeth Rasmussen said it is unclear to them why UFRG bailed.
“We can’t comment on the legal strategy behind that decision, but our focus remains the same: helping Utahns remove their signatures if they believe they were misled or lied to during the petition process,” Rasmussen said in a statement.
In the final hours of the 2026 Utah Legislature, lawmakers made a change to an election bill to ban voters from requesting signature removals using prepaid postage. Gov. Spencer Cox signed it less than 24 hours later, and it took effect immediately.
Before the dismissal, 14 voters who asked to remove their signatures moved to intervene in the case. They argued they were misled by signature gatherers, and in one case, never signed at all and believe their signature was forged.
They argued that UFRG’s lawsuit was not valid because, before lawmakers’ late-session change, Utah election law had no basis to invalidate removal forms over prepaid postage or prefilled info.
