Wisconsin Supreme Court picks Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' maps in redistricting fight
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
MADISON – A divided state Supreme Court approved election maps Thursday that were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers but will let Republicans keep the upper hand in races for the Legislature.
Update: U.S. Supreme Court throws out Wisconsin's redistricting plan for legislative maps
Thursday's decision was 4-3, with Justice Brian Hagedorn breaking from conservatives and joining liberals to form a majority.
The decision built off of a November ruling that said the justices would make as few changes as possible to the maps that have been in place since 2011. Those maps are heavily Republican, so the November ruling ensured whatever maps the justices chose also tilted that way.
Sixty of the 99 Assembly seats will lean Republican and 22 of the 33 state Senate seats will lean Republican, according to a December analysis of the maps by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Those margins are similar to what Republicans enjoy now.
Democrats notched a clearer victory when it came to the maps for Congress. Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil's district in southeastern Wisconsin will now lean Republican by about two points, or eight fewer than its current lean.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind's district will also remain competitive, with a Republican lean of two or three points. Republicans had hoped to make that district much more solidly Republican.
Kind is retiring and his district is a top target this fall as Republicans hope to take control of Congress.
The changes mean Wisconsin will now have two competitive congressional districts — Steil's and Kind's — instead of one.
Subscribe to our On Wisconsin Politics newsletter for the week's political news explained.
Evers greeted the decision with a "hell yes" in a news release.
"Today’s ruling isn’t a victory for me or any political party, but for the people of our state who for too long have demanded better, fairer maps and for too long went ignored —today’s victory is for them," he said in his statement.
States must draw new maps every 10 years to make sure legislative and congressional districts have equal populations based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau. How the lines are drawn can give one political party tremendous advantages.
Republicans controlled state government in 2011 and drew maps that heavily favored them. Last year, Evers and Republicans who control the Legislature couldn't agree on new maps.
That left it to the courts to resolve the stalemate, and the justices soon said they would limit the changes they would make. Evers, Republican lawmakers and others then submitted proposals to the justices — all of them with a Republican lean because they were based on the 2011 maps.
The justices picked Evers' maps because they concluded he did the best job of complying with their November ruling.
"The Governor's proposed senate and assembly maps produce less overall change than other submissions," Hagedorn wrote for the majority.
Likewise, Evers proposed congressional maps that minimized changes. His maps will put about 324,000 Wisconsinites into new congressional districts — about 60,000 fewer than what Republican members of Congress proposed.
"It is not a close call," Hagedorn wrote.
The maps are to be used in races for the next decade, starting with the Aug. 9 primaries.
The legal fight may not be over. Republicans offered no hint of what they might due, but they could revive a case in federal court or go to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to get different maps.
Hagedorn was the only justice to be in the majority in the November decision and Thursday's decision. Hagedorn, who was elected in 2019 with the support of Republicans, was with the conservatives in November and the liberals on Thursday.
It was the latest instance of Hagedorn parting with conservatives on a high-profile, politically charged case. He sided with the liberals on decisions that kept the Green Party's presidential candidate off Wisconsin's ballot in 2020 and upheld Joe Biden's victory in the state.
He signaled in January he was not seeing eye to eye with conservatives in the redistricting case when he was part of a 4-3 majority that barred Republican members of Congress from submitting a second set of maps for the court to consider. The majority in that ruling said it wouldn't be fair to let the members of Congress offer two sets of maps while others could offer only one.
Chief Justice Annette Ziegler wrote in a dissenting opinion that the four justices in the majority were demonstrating “a complete lack of regard” for the state and U.S. constitutions.
“I dissent because here, the majority's decision to select Governor Tony Evers' maps is an exercise of judicial activism, untethered to evidence, precedent, the Wisconsin Constitution, and basic principles of equal protection,” Ziegler wrote.
Joining Ziegler in dissent were Justices Rebecca Bradley and Patience Roggensack.
Agreeing with Hagedorn were Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky. The Bradleys are not related.
Evers’ maps will increase the number of Assembly districts with a majority of Black voters from six to seven. Evers said the change was necessary to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, which is meant to ensure racial minorities can elect candidates of their choice.
Citing changes in Milwaukee’s Black population, the majority found Evers’ reasoning solid for why a seventh district is needed.
The dissenters disagreed, saying Evers was taking race into account in drawing districts when he shouldn’t.
“The majority disrespects the (Voting Rights Act) and instead cabins voters for purportedly 'good reasons' in districts based solely on race, which is nothing short of a violation of the Equal Protection Clause," Ziegler wrote.
State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, a Republican from Oostburg, took a shot at Evers but not the court for the new maps.
"Tony Evers drew racially gerrymandered maps behind closed doors with no public input," LeMahieu said in a written statement without mentioning Republican lawmakers drew their own maps in secret as well. "His maps intentionally watered down minority representation for political gain and violated the open and transparent process the public deserved."
Evers campaigned in 2018 on overhauling redistricting to put a nonpartisan entity in charge of drawing maps instead of lawmakers. Republicans rejected the idea.
Evers set up his own commission, but Republicans ignored its work. Evers wanted to submit the commission's maps to the court but abandoned the effort once the justices ruled they planned to make as few changes to the maps as possible.
Sachin Chheda of the Fair Elections Project expressed disappointment with the decision because it largely locked in place the one-sided maps Republicans drew in 2011. His group seeks to have maps drawn in a nonpartisan way.
"Let me be clear: this fight is still far from over, and those who worked to rig these maps will be held accountable for ignoring the Constitution and the law and for ruling against the people in Wisconsin in implementing a 'least changes' map that continues the gerrymander," he said in a statement.
Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.
DOWNLOAD THE APP: Get the latest news, sports and more
Molly Beck of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
Contact Patrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.
Make your voice heard. Find and contact your representatives.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Supreme Court picks Evers' maps in redistricting fight
