Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature officially filed a lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming the maps proposed by Governor Evers and selected by the Wisconsin Supreme Court are unconstitutional.
According to the lawsuit, the boundaries selected by the state Supreme Court are a racial gerrymander.
Specifically, the group claims the state judges “did not and could not have concluded that drawing districts based on race was required by federal law and satisfied strict scrutiny.”
“Absent this Court’s intervention, Wisconsin’s forthcoming senate and assembly primary elections will be run on racially gerrymandered district lines that could not possibly survive this Court’s Equal Protection Clause scrutiny. Wisconsinites will soon suffer irreparable injury once they are re-sorted into the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s redrawn, racially gerrymandered plan. Once a voter is made to vote in these race-based districts, as compared to the Legislature’s race-neutral districts, the harm is done,” the complaint details.
The Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty (WILL), which has been successful in state-level cases, joined the appeal effort.
“The issue here goes well beyond whether the maps favor Democrats or Republicans. Our government may not make decisions based on race, save for the most extreme circumstances. The Governor’s maps establish legislative districts in the Milwaukee-area that violate this fundamental principle,” said WILL President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg.
While Republicans argue that the maps unfairly favor Democrats, Governor Tony Evers celebrated the decision by the court.
“The maps I submitted to the Court that were selected today are a vast improvement from the gerrymandered maps Wisconsin has had for the last decade and the even more gerrymandered Republican maps that I vetoed last year. We still have a long way to go, and I will never stop fighting for nonpartisan redistricting as long as I’m the governor of this great state.”
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Cooper Moran is a reporter for The Wisconsin Daily Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Tony Evers” by Tony Evers.Â
