Wisconsin Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge To Congressional Map
Appeal argues districts are an anti-competitive gerrymander favoring incumbents, not parties.
The interior of the Wisconsin State Capitol on Monday, July 14, 2025, in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will take up an appeal of a lawsuit dismissed in April that claims the state’s eight congressional districts represent an “anti-competitive gerrymander.”
The order issued late Friday comes amid an ongoing nationwide redistricting battle, as states run by Republicans and Democrats draw new maps in hopes of boosting their odds of controlling Congress after the November midterm elections. Petitioners in the case did not ask the court to make changes to Wisconsin’s map ahead of the 2026 elections, but rather to allow for a trial in spring 2027 that could lead to changes in congressional maps in 2028.
The lawsuit filed by liberal firm Law Forward on behalf of a group called Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy has taken an unprecedented path to reach the Supreme Court. It argues Wisconsin’s congressional voting districts are designed to give incumbent candidates better odds in re-election campaigns. Of the eight districts, Republicans hold six congressional seats and Democrats hold two.
The case was first filed in July in Dane County Circuit Court, but attorneys for the Business Leaders group petitioned the Supreme Court to create a panel of other county judges to hear it under an untested 2011 law written when Republicans had control of the Wisconsin Legislature and governor’s office.
That panel dismissed the case on April 28, stating that only the Supreme Court could overturn the congressional map on grounds that it’s too partisan. On Thursday, attorneys for the group the asked the justices to hear the case, arguing the panel relied on a “faulty reference” to partisan gerrymandering claims. The group claims its argument is not based on partisan but rather on “anti-competitive” gerrymandering.
In Friday’s order, the Supreme Court’s liberal majority agreed to take up the appeal. Liberal justices Rebecca Dallet, Janet Protasiewicz, Susan Crawford and Chief Justice Jill Karofsky denied the request from the Business Leaders’ group to expedite the appeal.
The two conservative justices on the court, Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley, attacked their liberal colleagues in dissents. Bradley said that “an astonishingly activist court will once again revisit precedent it doesn’t like in order to do the bidding of its political masters.”
“The Democratic Party bought multiple seats on this court to achieve yet another outcome unobtainable democratically,” Bradley wrote. “Like last time, the United States Supreme Court will likely reverse the majority’s unlawful ruling and protect our Republic.”
Ziegler said the group’s right to appeal under the 2011 statute is “at a minimum, questionable.”
“One would certainly hope that the majority is not entertaining the notion of revisiting and perhaps even redrawing congressional maps, but it begs the question: Why else would this appeal be heard?” Ziegler wrote.
Liberal Justice Rebecca Dallett responded to Ziegler and Bradley in her opinion in favor of taking the case. She called the attacks “false, inappropriate, and disingenuous” and said hearing the case “does not reflect any weighing of the merits of any party’s claims, let alone prejudgement about who will prevail and why.”
The appeal comes as Republican-controlled states including Texas and Democratic-controlled states including California have redrawn their own maps in time for midterms in an attempt to give their respective parties better odds in the battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Wisconsin Supreme Court takes up appeal seeking redraw of congressional map was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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