Wisconsin SC adopts GOP-drawn legislative maps

Wisconsin, Apr 16 (AP): The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday adopted Republican-drawn maps for the state Legislature, after initially approving maps drawn by Democratic Governor Tony Ever.

Wisconsin SC adopts GOP-drawn legislative maps

Wisconsin, Apr 16 (AP): The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday adopted Republican-drawn maps for the state Legislature, after initially approving maps drawn by Democratic Governor Tony Evers.

The court reversed itself after the U.S. Supreme Court in March said Evers' maps were incorrectly adopted.

The decision from the state's high court came the same day candidates could start circulating nomination papers to get on the ballot. Before the ruling, candidates didn't know for certain if they were running in the correct district and potential signers wouldn't know if they lived in the candidate's district and were eligible to sign the form.

The court on March 3 adopted Evers' legislative map, but the U.S. Supreme Court rejected it on March 23. That had left the state without new state Senate and Assembly district boundaries.

Evers' map created seven majority-Black state Assembly districts in Milwaukee, up from the current six. The map from the Republican-controlled Legislature had just five.

Democrats would have made some marginal gains under Evers' plan, but Republicans were projected to maintain their majorities in the Assembly and Senate, according to an analysis from the governor's office.

The U.S. Supreme Court found that Wisconsin's court, when it adopted Evers' map, failed to consider whether a “race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity.” Evers told the state Supreme Court it could still adopt his map with some additional analysis, or an alternative with six majority-Black districts. The Republican-controlled Legislature argued that its map should be implemented.

The court, controlled 4-3 by conservatives, sided with the Legislature.

“The maps proposed by the Governor ... are racially motivated and, under the Equal Protection Clause, they fail strict scrutiny,” Chief Justice Annette Ziegler wrote for the majority, joined by Justices Patience Roggensack, Rebecca Grassl Bradley and swing Justice Brian Hagedorn.

The Legislature's maps, they wrote, “are race neutral” and “comply with the Equal Protection Clause, along with all other application federal and state legal requirements.” The court's three liberal justices — Jill Karofsky, Ann Walsh Bradley and Rebecca Dallet — dissented. Karofsky, writing for the minority, said the Legislature's maps “fare no better than the Governor's under the U.S. Supreme Court's rationale.” “If, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Governor's addition of a Milwaukee-area majority-minority district evinces a disqualifying consideration of race, then the Legislature's removal of a Milwaukee-area majority-minority district reveals an equally suspect, if not more egregious, sign of race-based line drawing,” Karofsky wrote.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos tweeted praise for the ruling, saying Republicans “have thought our maps were the best option from the beginning.” Liberal groups decried the ruling.

Law Forward, which had argued on behalf of several community groups including Black Leaders Organizing for Communities and Voces de la Frontera, said the Legislature's maps will “deepen the partisan gerrymander Wisconsinites have been speaking out against for years.” Law Forward also said the new maps would dilute the votes of Black communities in the Milwaukee area “in violation of the Voting Rights Act.” Republicans currently hold a 61-38 majority in the Assembly and a 21-12 advantage in the Senate. Even under the GOP map that the state court initially rejected, they were not expected to gain a supermajority that could override any Evers veto.

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Wisconsin case marked the first time this redistricting cycle that it has overturned maps drawn by a state.

The court has signaled it may significantly change the ground rules that govern redistricting. The court's involvement comes after its 2019 ruling that federal courts have no role in stopping partisan gerrymandering.

In February, it stopped a ruling by a panel of federal judges requiring Alabama to redraw its maps to give Black people a better shot at selecting their representatives, saying it may need to revise the long-standing case law that governs that. It's that case law that the high court referred to in the Wisconsin ruling.

The court declined to block maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. But four conservative justices wrote that they want to rule on the novel legal theory that state legislatures, rather than state courts, have supreme power in drawing maps.

While the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Wisconsin's legislative maps, it adopted the congressional maps as proposed by Evers. Republicans currently hold five of the state's eight seats. That map made one of those GOP districts more competitive.

Redistricting is the process of redrawing political boundaries based on the latest census. Mapmakers can create an advantage for their political party by packing opponents' voters into a few districts or spreading them among multiple districts — a process known as gerrymandering. (AP) CJ CJ

(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)