Wisconsin congressional map, state Supreme Court hears arguments

MILWAUKEE - The Wisconsin Supreme Court is weighing whether to order lower court panels to re-examine legal challenges to the state's congressional map.

Map arguments

What we know:

Wisconsin Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments regarding lower court decisions that threw out lawsuits targeting the state's congressional maps. Two separate judicial panels dismissed the cases, but the state Supreme Court, which currently holds a 5-2 liberal majority, is considering whether to send the two cases back.

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What we don't know:

Justices have not indicated when they will issue a decision on whether to send the case to back to the lower court judges. Because election ballots are already out, the ruling will not alter district boundaries for this year's elections, though it could reshape maps for 2028 and 2030.

Representation on the line

The backstory:

In 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down legislative maps for the Wisconsin Senate and Wisconsin Assembly, which favored Republicans, but that decision did not alter the federal congressional districts. However, in 2025, the Wisconsin Supreme Court tasked two different panels of judges to weigh the issue, with each panel taking one specific case.

Wisconsin's congressional delegation is split between six Republicans and two Democrats.

Justices debate

What they're saying:

During arguments, Justice Rebecca Dallet questioned: "Political fairness sounds to me like ‘You know what if you have a Republican in charge, they might draw the maps a little more Republican; a Democrat, the same thing.’ How can that possibly be the same thing as ‘This is so unfair, it rises to a level of constitutional harm?’ which is extreme partisan gerrymandering, which is what we’re being asked about, not political fairness."

Justice Brian Hagedorn asked: "Maybe you can provide some enlightenment on this: some partisan effect is fine, some partisan intent is fine, maybe it’s somewhat a partisan gerrymander, then maybe there’s some talk that it’s an extreme partisan gerrymander, which again suggests that something less than extreme is fine. So, I’m not even sure what we’re being asked to test here about when we’ve crossed the constitutional threshold of something that’s too undemocratic."

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National perspective

Big picture view:

Redistricting is the war over your place on the maps that plays out every 10 years, when the country has a new census. The static number of members of Congress is divvied up to the states depending on those population counts, and how those maps are drawn in the states can favor one party or the other.

Some states have taken the extraordinary move to redistrict in the middle of the decade: for example, Republicans in Texas and Democrats in California. In Wisconsin, the question of redoing the maps has played out in the courts.

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