Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down State Legislative Maps

MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday struck down Republican-drawn legislative maps and ordered new district boundary lines in the perennial battleground state to be drawn before the 2024 election.

In its 4-3 ruling, the court majority held that scores of legislative districts woven into the maps failed to adhere to a requirement in the state’s constitution that all districts be “contiguous territories.”

According to the majority opinion, at least 50 of 99 assembly districts and 20 of 33 Senate districts fail to meet the requirements, rendering them unconstitutional.

“It’s clear to me that a Republican-controlled Legislature that has consistently gerrymandered itself into comfortable, partisan majorities for more than a decade is incapable of preparing fair, nonpartisan maps deserving of the people of this state,” said Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, after the ruling was announced.

“I agree with the court’s determination that these maps are unconstitutional because the districts lack contiguity. Wisconsin is a purple state, and I look forward to submitting maps to the court to consider, and review, that reflect and represent the makeup of our state,” Evers said in a written statement.

He added: “I remain as optimistic as ever that, at long last, the gerrymandered maps Wisconsinites have endured for years might soon be history.”

The districts that drew the court majority’s ire were based on lines drawn by the Republican-controlled government in 2011.

At the time, former Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, a Republican, had just been elected governor, and the GOP had experienced a number of victories across the state, including gaining majorities in the state’s U.S. House delegation, state Assembly and state Senate.

The map was redrawn following the 2020 census with an eye toward shoring up the state legislature’s Republican majority two years later.

As it stands now, the GOP currently holds a 64-35 majority in the Assembly and a 22-11 supermajority in the state Senate.

But things took a turn in the Democrats’ favor with the election of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, which flipped the balance of power on the court away from the Republicans for the first time in 15 years.

Throughout her campaign Protasiewicz ran in part on the premise that the state’s maps effectively “rigged” subsequent elections in the Republicans’ favor.

The day after she joined Wisconsin’s highest court in August, plaintiffs in what would become Clarke v. WEC, sued to overturn them.

Writing for the majority, Justice Jill Karofsky said Wisconsin’s state legislative districts must be composed of “physically adjoining territory.”

“The constitutional text and our precedent support this commonsense interpretation of contiguity,” she wrote.

The justices in the minority disagreed strenuously, one of them, Justice Annette Ziegler, writing in dissent that “This deal was sealed on election night.”

Another, Justice Rebecca Bradley, blasted her colleagues in the majority, calling them “handmaidens of the Democratic Party” who “trample the rule of law, dishonor the institution of the judiciary, and undermine democracy.”

Now that the court has acted, it will be up to Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature to come up with new maps before the 2024 election. If they fail to do so, the court has said it will intervene and impose a map of its own.

“It is way past time to end illegitimate minority rule in Wisconsin, and this decision is a powerful step toward fair representation,” said former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is now chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

“For more than a decade, Wisconsinites have been forced to live under unpopular policies enacted by artificial Republican legislative majorities, despite the fact that Democrats saw increasing — and sometimes majority — statewide support,” he continued. “Yet, Wisconsinites never gave up. They organized. They voted. They demonstrated that in order to protect democracy, we must DO democracy.

“Make no mistake: We’ve got a long way to go. But Wisconsin proves that when the people participate, over time, states that may seem unreachable in the fight for fairness today, could indeed become beacons of justice in the years to come. Wisconsin is now on that path,” Holder said.

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