By Joseph Ax

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A Utah judge has thrown out a new U.S. congressional map passed by the Republican-led legislature in favor of an alternative that appears likely to result in flipping one of the state’s four U.S. House seats to Democrats in next year’s midterms.

In a decision late on Monday night, District Judge Dianna Gibson called the legislative map an “extreme partisan outlier” that illegally gave Republicans an advantage. The Republican-drawn plan split Salt Lake County, where most of the state’s Democrats reside, in half.

Gibson chose one of two alternative maps proposed by voting rights groups that had sued over the map, both of which created a Democratic-leaning district centered on Salt Lake County.

Her decision arrived amid a national battle over redistricti

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