Leftists Now Control Wisconsin Supreme Court, Order New Maps

It is said that to the victors go the spoils, and that is certainly playing out in the battleground state of Wisconsin. The Supreme Court after the most recent election is now composed of four liberals and three conservatives, and the left wasted no time in exercising their new power.

By that 4-3 margin, the state high court declared that current electoral maps run afoul of the Wisconsin constitution and must be redrawn.

Democrats hailed the victory as righting a wrong, while Republicans denounced it as a foregone conclusion when the left took control of the court.

Liberal justices, led by Judge Jill J. Karofsky, wrote that districts that are not “contiguous territory” are unconstitutional. 

But conservative Judge Annette Ziegler countered that the bench’s leftists applied a “wrecking ball” to the state constitution. 

She said the judges made “no room, nor having any need, for longstanding practices, procedures, traditions, the law or even their coequal fellow branches of government.” Ziegler added that the majority’s activism “damages the judiciary as a whole.” 

Both parties involved with the lawsuit are due to present new maps by Jan. 12.

Law Forward brought the litigation, and organization attorney Dan Lenz called the ruling from the newly formed court “a victory for representative democracy in the state of Wisconsin.”

Lenz said the state is one of the most gerrymandered in the U.S. and accused Republicans of stripping “true representation from Wisconsin voters.”

The truth, however, is something that Law Forward and its allies avoided in this discussion. When power transfers from one party to the other, the newly strengthened faction declares the prior election maps to be drawn in the favor of the former majority.

This is a common political excuse to redraw maps to ensure that the now empowered hold onto power for the long term. Republicans controlled Wisconsin politics for at least a decade, and electoral maps reflected that reality.

Now Democrats hold the keys, and they want nothing more than entrench themselves for many elections to come.

Just as they accused the GOP of doing, it is certain that they will group voters in ways to all but guarantee a leftist majority in state politics. Then comes the inevitable court challenges, but Democrats now control the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

So their own version of gerrymandering will doubtlessly stand.