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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – The five liberal justices on the state Supreme Court, clowns in robes, must have rolled their eyes yesterday. For a second time, a panel of lower court judges refused to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional maps.
Both panels of judges ruled that the maps are properly drawn as-is, and that, without further guidance from the state’s highest court, they lack authority to make further changes.
The maps that we use to pick our congressmen were approved by the state legislature and signed by the governor, which is how our state constitution says the process is supposed to work. Nowhere in our state’s highest law does it say that the supreme court gets to draw the maps. That’s a power the court granted to itself.
The last time the state Supreme Court began a merry-maps adventure, they called in groups of college professors and so-called experts who noted that some districts were “packed” with voters from one party or the other. They suggested map changes to put more democrats in republican-majority districts. They also proposed combining districts that each had elected republicans, forcing two republicans to run against each other. The GOP-controlled legislature saw how off-the-rails the process was, and agreed to maps drawn by Governor Evers – realizing they’d be less-gerrymandered than what the court was working on.
The unpleasant fact is that every political map used in Wisconsin today, for state assembly, for state senate, and for Congress, was drawn by Tony Evers, was approved by the legislature, and signed by the governor. That’s how the state constitution says the process is supposed to work. And that was the conclusion of two panels of judges. The maps are fine as-is.
And the state constitution says nothing about how many democrats or republicans are supposed to be in each district. All it says is that voting districts must be contiguous and must have the same number of voters.
But our state Supreme Court, which acts as a super-legislature, will not leave well enough alone. Wisconsin’s congressional maps will likely survive this fall’s election. But the work of the state’s highest court, which seeks to bend the law to its desires instead of applying the law as-written, continues.
Chris Conley
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