Panels assigned by State Supreme Court to take up lawsuit on Congressional maps

The congressional redistricting fight has come to Wisconsin.  In late November, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered a pair of three-judge panels to hear arguments challenging the state’s congressional maps. 

The current Wisconsin redistricting fight is the opposite of what is taking place elsewhere.  States such as Texas and California are creating more gerrymandered districts for political advantage.  The Wisconsin fight seeks to undo the decade-old gerrymandered congressional maps and create less partisan voting districts.  Despite being a 50-50 state, six of the eight House seats are currently held by Republicans.

Because of a 2011 law passed by the Republican majority and signed by Governor Scott Walker, the State Supreme Court was mandated to appoint a panel of three circuit court judges – one for each lawsuit – to rule in the matter. Their decisions ultimately can – and likely will – be appealed to the Supreme Court.

That law was enacted, ironically, to help Republicans withstand challenges to the redrawn districts that heavily advantaged the GOP in 2011 by making sure cases against the maps weren’t brought in circuit courts they deemed unfavorable to their arguments, but rather that the panel be geographically diverse.

The State Supreme Court has gone from a 4-3 conservative majority in 2011 to a 4-3 progressive majority today. Of the six judges the Supreme Court picked from across the state for the two panels last month, three were appointed by Gov. Evers and two others supported liberal candidates.  

Voters represented by Law Forward and the Elias Law Group filed the lawsuits in July, claiming the state’s House districts were “a textbook example of an anti-competitive gerrymander.” In the complaint, attorneys cited Walker’s statute and asked the Supreme Court to appoint panels to hear the matter. The court voted 5-2 to order the panels. Justice Brian Hagedorn was the only conservative to concur but dissented as to how they were appointed.

Justices Crawford and Protasiewicz also issued orders denying requests from Republican members of Congress and GOP voters that they recuse themselves from the redistricting cases because of what they saw as a conflict of interest after they received contributions from parties that could be deemed to have a stake in the redistricting cases. 

“The Congressmen’s recusal theories are overbroad, impracticable, and rife with unintended consequences,” Crawford wrote. “Individuals and organizations have the right to contribute to judicial campaigns and to express their beliefs about the effect judicial elections will have on issues of importance to them. Demanding that a justice recuse from a case because third parties who made campaign contributions have expressed their views on high-profile issues improperly implies that the judge had endorsed or adopted such views. 

“This insinuation is inappropriate, particularly where the judge has expressly disclaimed such an endorsement, and undermines judicial impartiality,” she went on to say. “Further, it would chill protected speech and undermine this court’s central role of deciding cases of statewide importance.”

Under the court's orders, a case filed by Wisconsin voters represented by the Elias Law Group will be heard by Dane County Circuit Judge Julie Genovese, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Mark Sanders, and Outagamie County Circuit Judge Emily Lonergan.

The other, filed by Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy, represented by Law Forward will be heard by Dane County Circuit Judge David Conway, Portage County Circuit Judge Patricia Baker, and Marathon County Circuit Judge Michael Moran.

The Wisconsin State Senate and Assembly maps were ruled unconstitutional in 2023. Redrawn maps were approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Evers early in 2024.  The congressional districts were not contested at the time. Efforts are also ongoing by the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition to establish an independent, nonpartisan process for creating the state’s legislative and congressional maps. 

 Court to take up lawsuit on Congressional maps © 2025 by Carol Lenz is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0