Republican legislative leaders are poised to spend more than $1.8 million in taxpayer dollars on private attorneys to defend Wisconsin’s GOP-drawn legislative maps, according to contracts with three law firms.
Two lawsuits filed directly with the Wisconsin Supreme Court request new legislative maps ahead of the 2024 election. Both were filed last month, shortly after Justice Janet Protasiewicz was publicly sworn into office, giving liberals their first majority on the state’s highest court in more than a decade.
The complaints seek to undo a state Supreme Court decision last year that helped Republicans increase their majority in the Legislature and led to a supermajority in the Senate. Neither case challenges the state’s congressional maps.
On this episode of Rewind: Your Week in Review, Emilee and JR discuss how GOP lawmakers filed a motion seeking to force liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz off a pair of redistricting lawsuits because of the donations she received from the state Democratic Party and comments on the campaign trail calling the current maps “unfair” and “rigged.”
The plaintiffs have asked that every Wisconsin legislator be on the ballot next year under newly drawn maps, including the half of state senators who otherwise wouldn’t be on the ballot until 2026. Candidates elected to those Senate seats would serve two-year terms, with four-year terms beginning again with the 2026 election.
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Under three contracts signed last month by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, Wisconsin taxpayers will be on the hook for more than $1.8 million in fees to outside attorneys who have been hired to defend the state’s existing maps — considered some of the most gerrymandered districts in the nation.
A contract with law firm Lehotsky Keller Cohn states total fees will not exceed $870,000, while a second, with Consovoy McCarthy and Lawfair, states that legal fees through Aug. 15, 2024, will not exceed $965,000.
A third contract, with Bell Giftos St. John, charges $450 per hour for attorneys’ time and $150 per hour for work by paralegals. The contract does not include a pay limit.
The contracts, first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, also require the Legislature to cover additional out-of-pocket costs.
In addition to the Republicans’ attorneys, the five Democratic senators named in one of the lawsuits have retained attorneys from Madison-based Pines Bach law firm.
Under that contract, partners in the firm would be paid $300 an hour while staff attorneys would receive between $200 and $250 an hour. The Aug. 13 agreement required a $50,000 deposit and a provision that rates may be increased with written notice, while third-party and travel costs will also be billed to taxpayers.
The cost to taxpayers could increase further if Democratic Gov. Tony Evers hires outside attorneys to intervene in the cases. The governor suggested he might join the lawsuit last month, according to the Journal Sentinel.
The litigation
The Wisconsin Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the state’s set of 10-year legislative and congressional maps early last year after Evers vetoed Republicans’ preferred maps in 2021.
After calling for maps that made minimal changes to previous legislative district boundaries, the Wisconsin Supreme Court selected Evers’ preferred legislative and congressional maps. But Republicans alleged the governor’s legislative maps included a racial gerrymander and appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nation’s highest court then struck down Evers’ legislative maps but accepted his preferred congressional maps. The Wisconsin Supreme Court then selected the GOP-drawn legislative maps.
During that process and in the months since, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal justices have dropped hints about how they would conduct another redistricting process.
For one, if they accept the new cases, the liberal justices are unlikely to request that new maps closely conform to previous district boundaries. Additionally, the liberal majority could draw its own maps rather than choose from a selection of pre-drawn maps.
Call to recuse
What’s more, the Republican-controlled Legislature has requested that Protasiewicz recuse herself, arguing she has pre-judged the cases, which could result in more Democratic-friendly maps being drawn before the 2024 election.
Liberal attorneys have argued there is no legal or ethical obligation for Protasiewicz to step aside, despite her comments during the campaign that she thinks the current maps are “rigged” or because she accepted nearly $10 million from the Wisconsin Democratic Party.
The attorneys have argued the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that judicial candidates can discuss political issues, and nothing she said indicates that she has prejudged the case.
Redistricting experts say the state’s political geography, with Republicans spread out over the state but Democrats concentrated in the state’s biggest cities, makes it unlikely that any new set of legislative maps would give Democrats a legislative majority. But they also say that Wisconsin’s maps are among the most gerrymandered in the nation and Democrats would likely win many more seats under nonpartisan maps.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
