The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a closely watched challenge to partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin and decide whether it is unconstitutional for party leaders to entrench themselves in power with carefully drawn electoral maps.
There could be changes coming to how Illinois' legislative maps are drawn every ten years with the U.S. Supreme Court agreeing to take up a Wisconsin case on the very issue.
A dozen Wisconsin Democratic Party voters in 2015 sued state election officials, saying the redistricting divided Democratic voters in some areas and packed them in others to dilute their electoral clout and benefit Republican candidates.
"As I have said before, our redistricting process was entirely lawful and constitutional, and the district court should be reversed", Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said.
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. Already, federal courts have determined that Republican North Carolina lawmakers drew voting districts that are racially gerrymandered, which the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional.
In a possible sign of deep ideological divisions among the nine justices over the issue, the court's conservative majority granted Wisconsin's request, despite opposition from the four liberal justices, to put on hold the lower court's order requiring the state to redraw its electoral maps by November 1.
The Seventh Circuit Court found the map violates the constitution because it gives one party more power than the other.
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The commission oversees redistricting for both state legislative offices and congressional districts. The term comes from a Massachusetts state Senate district that resembled a salamander and was approved in 1812 by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry. "The highest court in America could establish clear constitutional limits on partisan map-drawing that could have applicability to IL and other states". If the Supreme Court rules that partisan gerrymandering such as this is unconstitutional, then our democracy will be protected from such cases of minority rule. The state is one of several battlegrounds where Republicans and Democrats fought to a virtual draw in last year's presidential election, but where Republicans enjoy election districts that have given them a almost 2-to-1 advantage in the state Assembly.
The justices could say as early as Monday whether they will intervene.
The case is Gill v. Whitford, Docket No. 16-1161.
"Gerrymandering" refers to the practice of drawing legislative district lines to favor incumbents, political parties or interest groups.
The cleanest answer for the nine justices would be to reverse the lower court decision striking down Wisconsin's legislative districts as too partisan.
Common Cause and the League of Women Voters have filed separate lawsuits challenging the new maps as partisan gerrymanders, using some of the same legal arguments threaded throughout the Wisconsin case. Although Republicans and Democrats split the vote in the 2016 general election, the GOP has a 2-1 advantage in the state legislature. In our stay application, I argued that requiring the Legislature to re-draw district maps this year would have been a waste of resources.
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