Redistricting litigation filings made public

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Filings made with the Clerk of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Wisconsin Court of Appeals in the “Redistricting Cases” were made public Tuesday evening.

Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission

View documents filed in 2023AP1399-OA Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Wright v. Wisconsin Elections Commission

View documents filed in 2023AP1412-OA Wright v. Wisconsin Elections Commission.

As previously reported by the Wisconsin Law Journal,  although the Wisconsin Constitution requires legislative districts “to consist of contiguous territory,” many nonetheless contain sections of land that are not actually connected. The resulting map looks a bit like Swiss cheese, where some districts are dotted with small neighborhood holes assigned to different representatives.

Wisconsin’s nationally peculiar practice of detached districts is cited as one of several alleged violations in a recent lawsuit seeking to strike down current Assembly and Senate districts and replace them before the 2024 election.

Like similar cases in states ranging from North Carolina to Utah, the Wisconsin lawsuit also alleges partisan gerrymandering is illegal under the state constitution’s guarantee of equal protection and free speech.

Though such claims have had mixed results nationally, Democrats hope the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new liberal majority will deliver a resounding rejection of gerrymandering that has given Republicans a lopsided legislative majority.

But the challenge to noncontiguous districts could provide judges a way to decide the case without ever addressing whether partisan gerrymandering is illegal.

“It could be that this gives the court a completely neutral basis for deciding the maps are no good,” said Kenneth R. Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.

Wisconsin’s Assembly districts rank among the most tilted nationally, with Republicans routinely winning far more seats than would be expected based on their average share of the vote, according to an Associated Press analysis. In other states, such as Nevada, Democrats have reaped a disproportionate advantage from redistricting.

Most states are guided by at least four traditional principles for reshaping state legislative districts after each decennial census. Those include districts being nearly equal in population, compact and contiguous and following the boundaries of cities and counties. “Contiguous” generally is understood to mean all parts of a district are connected, with some logical exceptions for islands.

In some states, mapmakers have gotten creative by using narrow strips of roads or rivers to connect otherwise distinct parts of a district. But few have gone so far as Wisconsin in treating contiguous as a loose synonym for “nearby.”

Wisconsin’s detached districts are ”profoundly weird,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount University Law School in Los Angeles who created the All About Redistricting website.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.