Wisconsin Supreme Court takes up legality of U.S. House maps

The fight for fair voting maps takes another step forward.  

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has agreed to hear Bothfield v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, a lawsuit alleging that the state’s congressional districts are illegally gerrymandered to favor Republicans. This marks the second major redistricting case the Court’s liberal majority has accepted in recent weeks, following its decision to review Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy v. WEC, which challenges the maps as anti-competitive.

The Bothfield case was initially dismissed in March by a three-judge circuit panel, which ruled it too similar to prior unsuccessful challenges. The Supreme Court's decision to revive the case drew sharp criticism from conservative Justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler. Bradley accused the majority of judicial activism, writing that the Court was revisiting precedent "to do the bidding of its political masters."

Because candidates have already filed for the upcoming November elections, neither lawsuit will result in new maps before the midterms. However, the litigation keeps Wisconsin at the center of a national battle over redistricting to control the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives.

Though both parties historically have used gerrymandering to their advantage, the impacts of the 2011 gerrymandering can be seen in the outsized majority the Republicans have enjoyed in a state that is divided evenly. In fact, despite the fact that Democrats have won 17 of 22 statewide races since 2018, Republicans, until recently, held near supermajorities in both the State Senate and State Assembly as well as six of eight U.S. House seats.

In addition to the litigation challenging the congressional districts, there is a movement to create an Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC). 

The Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition, a group of more than a dozen nonprofits, has been working for more than a year on a proposal for an IRC. The proposal would create a group of residents to craft the state's legislative maps. 

After the draft proposal is finalized, the Coalition will seek legislator sponsors. At that point, it will be assigned to a legislative committee for debate and a public hearing. Throughout the process, the language of the bill may be changed and/or amended. The goal is to have the IRC passed into law during the upcoming legislative session. The next step would be to approve an amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution to make nonpartisan redistricting permanent.

The progress toward fair maps has been slow but steady. 

In 2011, then Governor Scott Walker signed into law what were called the most gerrymandered voting maps in the country.  Continuous court battles ensued. After new maps were drawn following the 2020 census, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, with a new liberal majority, overturned them and ordered new state Assembly and Senate maps. In February 2024, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed the new maps into law. Though those new maps still allowed the GOP to retain its majorities in the state legislature, their margins were much narrower and more reflective of the partisan breakdown of the state.

The congressional maps, however, were not part of that lawsuit and remained unchanged.

Polls consistently show that about 80% of Wisconsin voters, across political stripes, want a fair redistricting process.  Nearly every county has either passed a resolution or an advisory referendum to end gerrymandering. From 2009 to 2022, twenty-one bills or resolutions were introduced to reform redistricting in Wisconsin. None of these proposals received an up-or-down vote on the floor of the state legislature.

Without an IRC in place soon, Wisconsin will face the same fight against gerrymandering after the 2030 Census.  

Nationally, Republicans in several states recently opted to redraw maps in the middle of the decade for the sole purpose of winning more seats in the House of Representatives this fall. Redistricting is meant to take place only at the end of the decade following the census. In response, Democrats redrew maps in several states just to try to break even with those Republican efforts. 

The mission of the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition is to “ensure representative government for all by advocating for and enacting (in law and practice) an independent and nonpartisan redistricting process, building a fair and accountable judiciary, and securing the rights of the populace to fair and equal access to voting by educating and engaging the people of Wisconsin.” 

Ideally, the type of Independent Redistricting Commission being promoted in the state would make such future gerrymandering much more difficult, if not impossible.