Liberal Law Firms Invoke GOP Process In Push For New Congressional Maps
Law firms want Republican procedure used to attempt to strike down Wisconsin Congressional maps.
The interior of the Wisconsin State Capitol on Monday, July 14, 2025, in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
In their latest attempts to make Wisconsin’s congressional voting map more favorable to Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, liberal law firms are pushing for an untested process first created by Republican state lawmakers in 2011.
They’re asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has declined to hear other redistricting lawsuits this year, to appoint a three-judge panel to decide whether the state’s congressional districts initially drawn 14 years ago are unconstitutional.
The process could potentially open a door to two lawsuits filed in Dane County Court aimed at overturning Wisconsin’s congressional map, which has helped Republicans win six of the state’s eight House districts.
Any decision issued by the judicial panel could only be appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The move comes at at time when Republican lawmakers in Texas are attempting to redraw their map in hopes of bolstering the GOP’s chances of keeping its slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Other states under Democratic control, like California, are also considering redrawing their maps to counter the move.
Wisconsin Republicans created judicial panel process in 2011
Wisconsin’s legal framework for having a judicial panel rule on redistricting challenges was created by Republicans after they won control of the state Assembly, Senate and governorship in the 2010 election. The change was passed alongside other GOP bills that redrew Wisconsin’s legislative and congressional district lines, helping cement Republican majorities ever since.
When the measure was working its way through the Legislature, GOP lawmakers framed the three-judge panel as a way to bring more statewide perspective to redistricting cases. At the time, Republicans had seen other initiatives of then-Gov. Scott Walker stall when they were blocked by individual judges in Dane County.
The law that set up the judicial panels requires the Supreme Court to appoint a panel of three circuit court judges from around Wisconsin. Once the panel is set, those judges could not be substituted. If a party in a redistricting case were to object to the panel’s ruling on a case, the statute requires any appeal to be filed directly with the Supreme Court.
In 2011, Democratic lawmakers opposed the idea and claimed having the Legislature force the Supreme Court to take up any appeal of the panel’s ruling was a violation of the state constitution’s separation of powers. The legislation was amended to give the Supreme Court the choice of whether to take such appeals.
2 lawsuits seek first-time use of redistricting panel
Despite all the redistricting lawsuits filed over the past decade-and-a-half, the judicial panel process created by Wisconsin Republicans has never been used. Now, attorneys for prominent liberal law firms are trying to change that.
On July 8, a group dubbed Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy filed a lawsuit claiming the state’s House districts are “a textbook example of an anti-competitive gerrymander.” In the complaint, attorneys for firms, including Law Forward, quoted state statute and asked a Dane County judge to notify the Supreme Court “to appoint a panel consisting of 3 circuit court judges to hear the matter.”
On July 21, attorneys from the Democratic firm Elias Law Group representing Wisconsin voters filed a similar lawsuit arguing the state’s congressional map is a partisan gerrymander. That case, which was also filed in Dane County, similarly asked that the Supreme Court establish a three-judge panel to hear the case.
The Elias Law Group request is notable because the state Supreme Court rejected a request from the firm to hear a congressional redistricting lawsuit directly in June. In their orders denying that petition and another from the Campaign Legal Center, justices did not explain why they declined to hear the cases. Liberals hold a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court.
Misha Tseytlin, an attorney representing Wisconsin’s six Republican U.S. House members, has filed letters with the Supreme Court arguing against forming what he described as “an inferior tribunal” to hear the redistricting lawsuits. Tseytlin argued justices should instead first hear arguments for whether the cases should be dismissed before the panel is formed.
Subsequent letters from the liberal firms bringing the lawsuits argue state law is clear on the establishment of the judicial panel. They also argued the request from the GOP House members shouldn’t be entertained because Republicans haven’t filed a formal motion to intervene in the cases.
‘Some uncertainty’ over how Supreme Court would appoint judges to hear redistricting cases
Judicial panels are common practice in the federal court system, where they’re the default process used to resolve redistricting disputes.
But it’s a different situation in state court, at least in Wisconsin. Bryna Godar, a staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, told WPR that because the process has never been used, “there is some uncertainty about what the procedure is for the Supreme Court appointing a panel of judges.”
“The statute just specifies that the Supreme Court shall do it, but it does not specify what the internal procedures of the Supreme Court are for selecting those judges,” Godar said. “There are some rules of judicial administration that govern how judges are appointed for other types of situations, but they don’t appear to specifically address this three-judge panel issue.”
Godar said the judicial panel process was nearly tested during a 2011 redistricting lawsuit, but the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed that case before any circuit court judges were appointed.
In push for new Wisconsin congressional map, liberal firms invoke process created by GOP was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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Interesting that 3 of the 6 current Republican house members were in the WI legislature when the law was passed (Fitzgerald, Grothman and Tiffany) and presumably voted for it now object to following the law they wanted (I did not look up their voting records on this specific law, but based my assumption on their current positions of never voting against Trump or the rest of the Republican Party). Or did they only want this rule when they had a guaranteed win at the WI Supreme Court; now that they don’t the law shouldn’t apply?