Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects move to reconsider state's congressional maps

WASHINGTON – The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request to reconsider the state's congressional maps ahead of the next election, ensuring the current district boundaries will remain in place for 2024.

The court's decision ends a last-minute push from Democrats to change the state's congressional maps after they successfully signed into law new legislative boundaries last month that weakened Republicans' grip on the state Legislature.

"This motion comes as no surprise after the court's new majority telegraphed its willingness to rebalance political power in the state of Wisconsin by overturning Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission," conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in the order, referencing the court's previous decision on the maps.

"While the court rightfully denies this motion," she added, "it likely won't be long until the new majority flexes its political power again to advance a partisan agenda despite the damage inflicted on the independence and integrity of the court."

Newly elected liberal Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz did not participate in a vote on the motion, writing Friday that she was not seated on the court when the underlying case was decided. Chief Justice Annette Ziegler joined Bradley in her concurring opinion rejecting the request to consider new maps.

The decision came in response to a motion filed in January by the Democratic law firm Elias Law Group to the state Supreme Court asking the court to reconsider the congressional lines ahead of the 2024 election. The group argued new lines were warranted after the high court, when considering the legislative map challenge late last year, said it would no longer favor maps that minimize changes to existing boundary lines — a theory known as the "least-change" approach.

Wisconsin’s current congressional district boundaries were drawn by Evers and later approved by the state Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court in March 2022 rejected the state’s legislative maps, also drawn by Evers, but declined to block the congressional lines at the time.

Democrats, however, argued in recent months that Evers' congressional maps were drawn under those now-defunct "least change" constraints.

The court in its decision did not directly address the theory. But Bradley and Ziegler in their concurrence said the liberal majority's "reckless abandonment of settled legal precedent" in the December legislative maps case on which the motion was based "incentivizes litigants to bring politically divisive cases to this court regardless of their legal merit."

There are just two competitive congressional districts in Wisconsin under the current maps. Republicans hold six of the state’s eight House seats, and Democrats safely control the deep blue 2nd and 4th Districts, anchored by Madison and Milwaukee, respectively.

The western 3rd District and southeastern 1st District are Wisconsin’s only competitive seats. Evers’ map put in place in 2022 maintained a slight Republican edge in the 3rd District, which flipped red later that year, and made the 1st District more competitive for Democrats, moving it from about a 9-point Republican margin down to a 2-point edge. Republican Rep. Bryan Steil easily won reelection in the 1st District last cycle.

Republicans at both the state and federal level had pushed back on the effort to change the congressional maps. They argued Protasiewicz, whose election last year flipped the high court into liberal control for the first time in over a decade, prejudged the case when she assailed the maps as "rigged" during her campaign.

They requested she recuse herself from the case. But Protasiewicz in an order on Friday called that request "moot" and said she declined to participate in the proceeding on the congressional maps because she had not yet been seated on the court when it issued a previous decision in the case.

Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming on Friday praised the court's decision, calling it "the demise of Governor Evers' latest attempt to throw out his own hand-drawn congressional maps."

A spokesman for Elias Law Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Madison Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan, a proponent of changing the congressional maps, said in a text that he was "very disappointed" the court would not hear the challenge.

"When you have a purple state that's 50-50, it's hard to have six seats representing one party and two representing the other, and think it's anything that's close to fair," Pocan said.

The high court faced a tight deadline to act on the January motion. The Wisconsin Elections Commission had said that any new maps must be in place by March 15 to take effect for the 2024 election.

Candidate nominating petitions begin circulating on April 15 for the state's Aug. 13 primaries.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects move to reconsider congressional maps