[The ruling, coming just months after liberals gained a 4-to-3
majority on the State Supreme Court, could undo gerrymanders that have
given Republicans lopsided control of the State Legislature.]
[[link removed]]

JUSTICES IN WISCONSIN ORDER NEW LEGISLATIVE MAPS  
[[link removed]]


 

Julie Bosman
December 22, 2023
New York Times
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The ruling, coming just months after liberals gained a 4-to-3
majority on the State Supreme Court, could undo gerrymanders that have
given Republicans lopsided control of the State Legislature. _

The Wisconsin Supreme Court held a redistricting hearing at the State
Capitol in Madison in November., Pool photo by Ruthie Hauge

 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court said on Friday that the state’s heavily
gerrymandered legislative maps that favor Republicans were
unconstitutional and ordered new maps before the 2024 election. The
ruling has the potential to produce a seismic political shift in a
crucial presidential swing state.

Justice Jill J. Karofsky, writing for the majority, said that
Wisconsin’s current maps violate a requirement in the State
Constitution “that Wisconsin’s state legislative districts must be
composed of physically adjoining territory.”

“Given the language in the Constitution, the question before us is
straightforward,” she wrote. “When legislative districts are
composed of separate, detached parts, do they consist of ‘contiguous
territory’? We conclude that they do not.”

The decision was widely expected from a court that flipped to a 4-to-3
liberal majority this year after the most expensive judicial election
in U.S. history. The winner of that election, Justice Janet
Protasiewicz, a former Milwaukee County judge, was openly critical of
the current legislative maps, calling them “rigged” and
“unfair” during her campaign.

One day after Justice Protasiewicz was sworn into the court in August,
a coalition of voting rights groups and law firms filed
[[link removed]] a
petition for the State Supreme Court to hear a redistricting case.

The petition, filed on behalf of 19 voters in Wisconsin, sought to
have new maps drawn by March. In the 4-to-3 decision on Friday, the
court said that if lawmakers do not produce new legislative maps, it
is prepared to adopt its own.

Democrats will now have the opportunity to make gains in a legislature
that is currently heavily tilted to favor Republicans. In a state with
an electorate that is split roughly equally between Democrats and
Republicans, Republicans hold a 64-35 majority in the Assembly and a
22-11 supermajority in the Senate. The Democratic governor, Tony
Evers, was re-elected to a second term in 2022 and will serve until at
least 2026.

“It’s a great day for democracy in Wisconsin,” said Kelda Roys,
a Democratic state senator. “This gives us a chance to finally have
fair maps and let the voters choose their elected leaders, rather than
the other way around.”

But Republicans suggested that the battle over legislative maps was
not over. Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the State Assembly,
said in a statement that the case “was pre-decided before it was
even brought.”

“Sad day for our state when the State Supreme Court just said last
year that the existing lines are constitutional,” he said. “The
U.S. Supreme Court will have the last word.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Vos had threatened to move to impeach Justice
Protasiewicz because of her statements calling the maps “rigged,”
but he has since backed away from those comments. On Thursday,
he called
[[link removed]] impeachment
proceedings against the justice “super unlikely.”

Democrats exulted in the court’s decision, hoping that a newly drawn
legislative map would dramatically increase the number of competitive
seats statewide.

Greta Neubauer, the Democratic minority leader of the Assembly, said
that new maps could potentially shift the balance of power in the
Legislature.

“If the maps that come out of the court are fair, we absolutely have
the opportunity to win a majority in Wisconsin,” she said.

That notion was dismissed by the former Republican governor Scott
Walker, who in an email on Friday called the ruling a “partisan
decision” and rejected the suggestion that redrawn maps could result
in legislative majorities for Democrats.

“This is not the win the left thinks it is,” Mr. Walker said.

Other Republicans criticized the ruling as a power grab by Democrats
in the immediate wake of Justice Protasiewicz’s election.

“We certainly expected this,” said Duey Stroebel, a Republican
state senator. “She said while running for office that the maps were
rigged. Now that they have control of the court, they legislate from
the bench.”

In an angry dissent, Justice Annette Ziegler, one of three
conservatives on the panel, denounced the liberal majority as
“robewearers” who “grab power and fast-track this partisan call
to remap Wisconsin.”

“The court of four takes a wrecking ball to the law, making no room,
nor having any need, for longstanding practices, procedures,
traditions, the law, or even their coequal fellow branches of
government,” she wrote. “Their activism damages the judiciary as a
whole.”

For all the partisan animus surrounding the issue in the state, the
ruling reflects the increasing politicization of courts nationwide. In
North Carolina, for example, the State Supreme Court reversed itself
on legislative maps earlier this year after the majority flipped from
Democratic control to Republican.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the fairness of
the state’s maps in November, as bystanders packed into a courtroom
in the State Capitol.

Conservatives on the court accused Democrats of waiting to raise their
claim that the maps violated the State Constitution until they had
secured a liberal majority on the court.

“Everybody knows that the reason we’re here is because there was a
change in the membership of the court,” said Justice Rebecca
Bradley, interrupting a lawyer representing Democratic voters.

Lawyers representing Republicans said that in the past Democrats had
not raised claims of unfairness about noncontiguous districts. One of
the lawyers, Taylor Meehan, said the Democrats’ claims were
“meritless.”

But Mark Gaber, a lawyer representing Democrats, said that the
state’s bizarrely contorted maps had disenfranchised voters.

“Wisconsin is the only state that has anything that looks anything
like this,” Mr. Gaber said of the current district boundaries,
adding, “This shocks people across the country who look at this
map.”

It was not immediately clear what effect a redrawn legislative map in
Wisconsin might have on the presidential election in 2024. Democrats
said they were optimistic that new maps would create competitive
elections in more districts, potentially boosting turnout.

Dan Lenz, a lawyer for the petitioners, called the decision “a
victory for a representative democracy in the state of Wisconsin.”

“For too long, right-wing interests have rigged the rules without
any consequences,” he said. “Gerrymandered maps have distorted the
political landscape, stifling the voice of the voters.”

_JULIE BOSMAN is the Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times,
reporting on the Midwest. She has written for The Times on the
coronavirus pandemic, education, politics, law enforcement and
literature. She joined The Times in 2002 as a news assistant in the
Washington bureau._

_Subscribe to the NEW YORK TIMES.
[[link removed]]_

* Wisconsin
[[link removed]]
* Gerrymandering
[[link removed]]
* State Supreme Court
[[link removed]]
* elections
[[link removed]]
* democracy
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]