On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court sided for Republicans in Wisconsin’s legislature. This overturned state legislative maps approved by both Democratic Governors. Tony Evers, and the conservative majority state Supreme Court.
The majority of the federal Supreme Court’s members voted in an unsigned decision said that the state court had not given enough considerationTo determine whether the Voting rights Act required the addition of a seventh district to the state Assembly, which would be dominated by Black voters. The Court found that the state court “committed legal error” in failing to consider the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause when deciding on the maps.
The ruling remands the case back to the state Supreme Court, which can reconsider Evers’s maps. But “any new analysis,” the federal High Court said, “must comply with our equal protection jurisprudence.”
The state’s addition of a seventh majority black district would be in line with the Equal Protection clause and the Voting Rights act. Black residents in the state comprise close to 7 percent of the state’s total population.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a dissent blasting the decision as “unprecedented,” which Justice Elena Kagan signed on to.
“The court today faults the State Supreme Court for its failure to comply with an obligation that, under existing precedent, is hazy at best,” Sotomayor said.
Separately, the Supreme Court allowed maps that redrew U.S. congressional boundaries to stand in a separate ruling.
Elections clerks in the state noted that the Supreme Court’s decision will complicate their workThe ruling basically invalidates the state legislative maps. It will be three weeks before the candidates for office can start getting their nomination papers signed.
“We are 3 weeks away from Nomination papers being circulated, and because of the Right Wing SCOTUS action here, we do not have legislative districts,” Democratic Party insider George Gillis said.
Many progressive organizations in the state reacted against the ruling.
“The rightwing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court swerved way out of their way to favor their Republican friends in the Wisconsin legislature. It is but the latest example of how nakedly partisan the high court has become,” said Matthew Rothschild of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Sachin Chheda of the Fair Elections Project noted the hypocrisy of the Court’s ruling — the Court had rejected Voting Rights Act claims in previous challenges from Democrats in other states, but accepted them when it helped Republicans in Wisconsin.
“Never has it been clearer that the U.S. Supreme Court majority will do anything it can to advance Republican interests, rather than the law, the Constitution, and the will of the people,” Chheda said.
Evers also seemed to be in agreement with that assessment. In a statement reacting to the ruling, the Wisconsin governor noted that the Supreme Court “made a remarkable departure, even from their own recent actions, by deciding to reject our maps that the Wisconsin Supreme Court selected just a few weeks ago.”
“Our maps are far better than Republicans’ gerrymandered maps we have now and their maps I vetoed last year,” Evers added, “and we are confident our maps comply with federal and state law, including the Equal Protection Clause, the Voting Rights Act, and the least-changes standard articulated by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”
