Tuesday, March 26

SCOWIS reverses course, picks Republicans’ redistricting maps | News








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Wisconsin State Supreme Court


MADISON (WKOW) — In a twist that could reshape legislative races in Wisconsin for the next decade, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday adopted district maps submitted by the GOP-controlled legislature.

The 4-3 decision departed from the court’s previous ruling that chose Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s submitted maps.

The US Supreme Court sent back those maps, saying they weighed race too heavily in their creation of a seventh majority-Black Assembly district in and around Milwaukee. It was unclear how the court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, split on the question because no justices put their name on the opinion.

The legislature’s maps reduce the number of majority-Black Assembly districts from six to five.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul slammed the decision, noting the outside analysis that has found the legislature’s maps would enhance an edge Republicans gave themselves when they drew the current set of maps in 2011.

This decision is a travesty for democracy in Wisconsin,” Kaul said in a statement. “The court, applying a new standard in a case it should never have taken, has made one of the most extreme gerrymanders in America even worse.

Gov. Evers also spoke out, calling the decision an “unconscionable miscarriage of justice.”

This court had clearly and decisively rejected the Legislature’s maps prior to this case being considered by the Supreme Court of the United States, and today, they have backtracked on that decision, upholding the very maps they had previously found to unlawfully ‘pack’ Black voters ,” Evers said in a statement. “At a time when our democracy is under near-constant attack, the judiciary has abandoned our democracy in our most dire hour.”

The conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) argued in favor of the legislature’s maps and maintained Evers never proved why an additional majority-Black district was necessary in the 99-seat Assembly.

“We are pleased that the Court recognized that our Constitution reserves race-based decision-making for the most extreme situations,” WILL President Rick Esenberg said in a statement. “The Governor did not justify his race-based redistricting of him. The Court was right to reject it.”

With the case back before the state’s high court for weeks, Brian Hagedorn provided the swing vote, just as he did in a 4-3 decision that first picked Evers’s maps.

The state court had previously rejected the governor’s request to submit new evidence backing its claim the maps were compliant with the Voting Rights Act.

Hagedorn wrote in Friday’s opinion the state was left to pick lawmakers’ maps when the only higher court had ruled the governor’s maps were unconstitutional.

“In light of the Supreme Court’s clarified instructions, the Legislature’s state senate and state assembly maps are the only legally compliant maps we received,” Hagedorn wrote.

Outside analysts have observed that the current maps, drawn by Republicans in 2011, artificially inflate their advantage in the battleground state.

The legislature’s maps this time strengthen that edge. Under the governor’s maps, Democrats would likely gain seats but, short of a huge blue wave, would not be enough to take a majority in the Assembly because of a natural Republican advantage due to liberal voters clustering in Milwaukee and Madison.


www.wkow.com

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