The justices on Monday said they will decide whether Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin drew electoral districts so out of whack with the state's political breakdown that they violated the constitutional rights of Democratic voters.
The justices in a brief written order said they would review a redistricting case from Wisconsin, where a three-judge lower court past year invalidated a redistricting plan enacted by the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature in 2011.
Several election lawyers said it was unclear how far-reaching a Supreme Court ruling in the Wisconsin case might be, given that other election maps are being challenged at federal and state levels using different legal arguments.
A panel of three federal judges in Madison ruled 2-1 that the way Republicans redrew the districts violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of equal protection under the law and free speech by undercutting the ability of Democratic voters to turn their votes into seats in Wisconsin's legislature. Republicans control the majority of legislatures, and 2010 redistricting gave the GOP advantages in elections in those states.
In 2012, after the adoption of the new map, Republicans won 48.6 per cent of the statewide vote but captured 60 seats in the 99-seat State Assembly. Judge Kenneth F. Ripple of the three-judge Federal District Court stated that the lines were "designed to make it more hard for Democrats, compared to Republicans, to translate their votes into seats". The district court agreed with the challengers that the map was drawn for partisan reasons and resulted in "wasted votes".
Before 2020, the case could affect congressional maps in about half a dozen states and legislative maps in about 10 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
"We're optimistic that the court will at last recognize that there is a point at which a partisan gerrymander goes too far", Mr. Geffen said in a phone interview.
Xbox One X? Is that the best name Microsoft could think of?
We'll have a marketing deal on those, but I don't say, hey, I need some kind of Strike or skin somebody else can't play. The Xbox One X will be released worldwide on November 7th with a price starting at U.S. $499/£449/€499.
The panel, however, denied one of the plaintiffs' principal requests: to have judges, not lawmakers and the governor, in charge of redrawing the legislative boundaries, stating in its opinion, "it is neither necessary nor appropriate for us to embroil the Court in the Wisconsin Legislature's deliberations".
"Partisan gerrymandering of this kind is worse now than at any time in recent memory", Whitford's attorney, Paul Smith of the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement.
Republicans control the U.S. Congress.
The justices regularly are called to invalidate state electoral maps that have been illegally drawn to reduce the influence of racial minorities by depressing the impact of their votes. The state's lawyers said the districts were compact and neatly drawn.
Walker says he sees no reason why the highest court in the land would force Wisconsin to redraw their legislative maps.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who sometimes sides with the court's liberals in major cases, could cast the decisive vote.
And that's why court challenges to partisan gerrymandering are so important. The 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed this practice by requiring states to create "majority-minority" districts, which are districts which feature a majority of voters from a single minority group. In 2014 and 2016, Republicans extended their statehouse advantage to 63 and then 64 seats even though the statewide vote remained almost tied. It will be the high court's first case in more than a decade on what's known as partisan gerrymandering.
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