The “extreme partisan gerrymanders” under Republican-drawn legislative maps violate the state Constitution by diluting and debasing Wisconsinites’ ability to vote, a group of liberal voters and redistricting advocates argue in a new lawsuit.
The lawsuit is the second filed directly with the Wisconsin Supreme Court and requests new legislative maps ahead of the 2024 election. The first lawsuit was filed a day after Justice Janet Protasiewicz was sworn into office, giving liberals a 4-3 majority on the state’s highest court.
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The latest lawsuit was filed Friday by voters who support Democratic candidates and several members of the Citizen Mathematicians and Scientists, a group of professors and research scientists who submitted proposed legislative boundaries leading up to the state Supreme Court’s 2022 decision adopting the GOP maps.
The complaint seeks to undo the high court’s decision last year that helped Republicans increase their majority in the Legislature and led to a supermajority in the Senate. Like the other case filed this month, the complaint doesn’t challenge the state’s congressional maps.
The new lawsuit states that current maps violate Wisconsin’s free speech guarantee by diluting the voting power of Democratic voters in the state. Additionally, it states the maps violate the state’s constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law by entrenching a GOP majority in the state Legislature.
“And voters’ engagement with, and interest in, Wisconsin’s elections will decline because mapmakers have effectively predetermined the results,” the lawsuit states.
Much like the lawsuit filed last week by several voters, including a former Democratic legislative candidate, the new complaint also asks for every Wisconsin legislator to 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.
“In Wisconsin, the present partisan gerrymandering in the Legislative Plans is so extreme that it must be eradicated entirely in time for the 2024 elections,” according to the lawsuit. “Every Wisconsin voter should have the opportunity to vote for both Senate and Assembly members in 2024 and for the remainder of the decade under legislative plans that comply with the Wisconsin Constitution.”
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.
Previous rulings
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.
Plaintiffs in the latest lawsuit argue that, by ordering minimal changes to the state’s previous maps, the state Supreme Court created an “even greater partisan skew.”
“The result is legislative districting plans that violate multiple rights guaranteed by the Wisconsin Constitution,” the lawsuit states. “This Court should act swiftly to establish new maps that fully cure the rampant constitutional violations in the current plans.”
Since the adoption of current legislative boundaries, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal justices have dropped hints that they would move away from the “least change” approach, which the court ordered leading up to the adoption of current maps.
Additionally, the liberal majority could draw their own maps rather than choose from a selection of predrawn maps.
Like the previous lawsuit challenging the state’s maps, the latest complaint does not specify how it wants the Wisconsin Supreme Court to choose new maps.
