{"id":7256,"date":"2023-11-21T16:44:07","date_gmt":"2023-11-21T17:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=7256"},"modified":"2023-11-21T18:02:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T18:02:32","slug":"wisconsin-supreme-court-hears-redistricting-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=7256","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin Supreme Court Hears Redistricting Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/wisconsin-supreme-court-hears-redistricting-challenge\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Wisconsin<\/p>\n

(The Center Square) \u2013 A lawyer for the groups seeking to overturn Wisconsin\u2019s legislative maps didn\u2019t finish his first sentence before one of the state\u2019s conservative justices demanded to know why he was bringing the case now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere were you? Where were your clients two years ago?\u201d Justice Rebecca Bradley asked. \u201cWe’ve already been through this. Redistricting happens once every 10 years after the census. All of the issues that you’re bringing actually could have been brought before this court two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

A number of liberal and progressive groups, with the support of Democrats in Wisconsin, are challenging Wisconsin\u2019s the maps.<\/p>\n

The groups say the maps are gerrymandered and favor Republicans. More specifically, they argue that because not every district is 100% connected, those maps are gerrymandered to the point where they are unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Attorney Mark Gaber told Bradley his clients didn\u2019t go to court two years ago because they weren’t yet sure what Wisconsin\u2019s political maps would look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am unaware of any authority that would say if you don’t raise a constitutional claim in 12 days that you’re forever precluded from raising that claim in the future, when you have no idea that that claim is going to arise for the particular map that is going to be put into place,\u201d Gaber answered.<\/p>\n

Bradley didn\u2019t buy that argument.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knows that the reason we\u2019re here is because there was a change in membership on the court,\u201d Bradlley said. \u201cYou would not have brought this action had the newest justice had lost her election.\u201d<\/p>\n

The progressive groups who are challenging the maps announced their lawsui<\/a>t less than 24 hours after newly elected liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz was sworn-in on the court.<\/p>\n

Protasiewicz faced calls to recuse herself from Tuesday’s case after she called Wisconsin\u2019s political maps \u201crigged\u201d in favor of Republicans, and \u201cunfair\u201d during her campaign in the spring.<\/p>\n

Gaber and the groups want the court to draw new maps and toss out the 2022 election results because every state representative and more than a dozen state senators were elected under what the groups call \u201cmalapportioned\u201d boundaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an absolutely extraordinary remedy,\u201d Bradley added. \u201cThere are many intonations about democracy throughout the briefing. I can’t imagine something less Democratic than unseating most of the legislature that was just elected last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor Meehan, the lawyer for the Wisconsin legislature, argued many of the same points as Bradley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis court invited petitioners to intervene in [the last redistricting case] two years, one month and 15 days ago. They waited. They waited exactly one day after this court’s membership changed to file their unprecedented collateral attack. They have no answer for their delay,\u201d Meehan said.<\/p>\n

She said the argument from the progressive groups are \u201cmeritless\u201d and a \u201cwolf in sheep’s clothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[The groups] cannot now cry foul, shortening Wisconsin senators constitutionally prescribed terms and rushing this case to judgment in only a few months time,\u201d Meehan said.<\/p>\n

If the court agrees with the argument from the progressive groups, the court will then have to decide how to draw new political.<\/p>\n

The court is not saying when a decision in the case will come. The groups who want the new maps are asking to have the maps redrawn before 2024\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/wisconsin-supreme-court-hears-redistricting-challenge\/ (The Center Square) \u2013 A lawyer for the groups…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":2596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7256"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7258,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7256\/revisions\/7258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}