From the Article:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is now considering a handful of proposed changes to the state’s legislative boundaries after Republicans, Democrats, university professors and partisan law firms submitted options as part of a lawsuit aimed at making the state’s legislative districts more competitive.
The court received submissions from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, Republican legislative leaders, Democratic lawmakers, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professors, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and the petitioners who brought the lawsuit who are represented by Law Forward, a liberal legal firm.
Most of the submissions would reduce the current Republican advantages.
The court will review the seven sets of competing legislative maps as it lurches toward the March 15 deadline to enact new districts ahead of the August legislative primary.
The court on Dec. 22 ordered the Republican-controlled state Legislature to draw new legislative boundaries ahead of the 2024 election, arguing the maps are unconstitutional because many disticts’ boundaries are not contiguous — meaning they include pieces of land that are not connected.
In a 4-3 decision, justices said they are also prepared to replace the state’s heavily gerrymandered maps if the Legislature and Democratic governor cannot agree on a new plan. In that case, the court ruled that justices will consider the partisan makeup of the new map if they are forced to step in.
Law Forward brought the legal challenge straight to the Supreme Court in August — bypassing lower courts in an expedited effort to put new maps in place before the fall. The lawsuit came to the court shortly after it flipped to a liberal majority for the first time in years with the election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz.
The state’s current maps are a product of another court battle — Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission — that ultimately landed at the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2022, the nation’s highest court threw out election maps drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. The state Supreme Court embraced a redistricting plan crafted by Republican state lawmakers just three weeks later.
Like now, the decision from the state Supreme Court was released without time to spare, just as candidates could begin circulating petitions to get on the midterm ballot that year.
The court’s most recent ruling delivers a political landmine ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle that will all but certainly focus on the battleground state of Wisconsin. It’s the latest removed in Republican power since GOP dominance in Wisconsin state government began diminishing in 2016, when Donald Trump became president.
Since then, Republicans have lost the governor’s office and control of the state Supreme Court.
In a narrowly divided state that often decides statewide races by a few thousand votes, Republicans have held wide majorities in the state Legislature for years.
The current maps tilt heavily in Republicans’ favor, according to a December analysis by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.