Faced with some hard realities and some bad optics, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has declined to hear “overtly political” challenges to the Badger State’s congressional maps. 

It’s a huge setback for Democrats who counted on more favorable tweaking of the maps to help them take back power in next year’s elections. 

‘Out-of State Leftists’ Rejected

The leftist-led court this week unanimously decided — without comment — to reject lawsuits from Democrats seeking to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries more to their liking in time for the 2026 midterms. In fact, some of the biggest fat cats in Democratic Party politics made big promises that if leftists could hold the state Supreme Court in the spring 2025 election they could expect the friendlier court to deliver friendlier maps that would help them take back the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Leftist-backed Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge with far-left bonafides, easily won the election thanks to unprecedented campaign spending. But while Wisconsin’s court of last resort will be controlled by leftists for the foreseeable future, the majority may have found itself boxed in for a few reasons, attorney Lucas Vebber said.

“Thankfully, an overtly political effort to overturn these maps has been rejected,” Vebber, deputy counsel for the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), said in a statement. “Today’s decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court reinforces the legitimacy of our state’s congressional maps and pushes back against radical, out-of-state leftists trying to meddle in Wisconsin.”

WILL argued against the lawsuits, including one filed by Democratic Party “fixer” and phony Russian dossier peddler Marc Elias. Democrats sought to do away with the maps proposed by their own state standard bearer, far-left Gov. Tony Evers. But a Supreme Court controlled by liberals for the next several years had Dems dreaming of even bigger than what Evers could get away with in divided government. That’s a big reason why April’s election was the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history. 

‘Court of Partisan Vengeance’

Well-heeled Democratic Party funders in January hosted a donor-advisory call in which they pitched the importance of the Supreme Court election, selling national investors on the idea that electing Crawford could open the door for a favorable ruling on redrawn Wisconsin congressional maps. Crawford was the guest of honor. 

The invitation declared that “winning this race could also result in Democrats being able to win two additional US House seats, half the seats needed to win control of the House in 2026.” 

Vebber said the optics definitely were a problem for Crawford and her liberal colleagues on the court. 

“As we said before, this was a blatant partisan power grab,” the attorney told The Federalist Thursday in a phone interview. “This is a court of law not a court of partisan vengeance. Some partisans tried to turn it into a court of partisan vengeance, but the justices resisted that.”

State Rep. Dan Knodl, a Milwaukee-area Republican, doesn’t believe the political optics mattered much to the left. 

“I would guess that as far as the [liberal] justices themselves, they don’t give a shit. They’re going to be as radical as they can possibly be,” Knodl told The Federalist in a phone interview. “Wherever the pressure is coming from, I don’t think it’s them looking in the mirror.” 

The lawmaker said he thinks the leftists on the court are beginning to “wake up and read the tea leaves,” particularly after this month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling finding the state court violated a Catholic Charity’s First Amendment rights. That could have been a sign of things to come for Wisconsin’s congressional maps battle. 

‘Unconstitutionally Intrude’

In April, WILL published an analysis laying out the many hurdles the state Supreme Court faced in ruling in favor of the Democrats, even had it accepted the original actions. The report, authored by Vebber, detailed the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2022 demanding that, because the governor and the legislature couldn’t comes to terms, the congressional maps should be drawn under the spirit of “least change” from the 2011 maps. Democrats hated those legislative lines. Despite meeting constitutional muster, the political boundaries were drawn and signed by a Republican legislature and a Republican governor. At no time had the congressional maps been ruled to be gerrymandered, WILL’s analysis noted. 

The conservative-led court at the time selected Evers’ proposal. It was a big victory for Democrats, but not big enough. 

In January 2024, Elias’ lawfare firm attempted to challenge the congressional maps and reopen the case. The seven-member court rejected the request 6-0, with leftist Justice Janet Protasiewicz opting out. She had successfully campaigned for her Supreme Court seat in 2023 complaining about what she claimed to be political maps “rigged” in favor of Republicans. 

Interestingly, Protasiewicz issued orders in the latest maps lawsuits denying motions that she recuse. The justice said state statute does not require she do so because she is “confident that I can, in fact and appearance, act in an impartial manner…” 

In his analysis, Vebber argued that the six members who declined to reopen the congressional districts case last year were unlikely to change that stance. Doing so would require at least three justices who adopted Evers’ maps to “not only reverse their initial decision from 2022, but also  to reverse their decision to decline to reopen the case just last year.” 

The state Supreme Court must have seen the eventual writing on the wall. As Vebber noted, the court tinkering with the maps at this point would violate the constitution’s Elections Clause. The U.S. Supreme Court has not looked kindly on such judicial meddling. In 2023’s Moore v. Harper, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “state courts may not so exceed the bounds of ordinary judicial review as to unconstitutionally intrude upon the role specifically reserved to the state legislature.”

“Any effort by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to throw out the Governor Evers map it adopted just three years ago (and declined to revisit just last year), would almost certainly fall within what the United States Supreme Court’s warned state courts could not do,” Vebber wrote. 

‘Great Day for the Rule of Law’

Democrats bemoaned the court’s refusal to take the congressional map cases, calling the political lines that Wisconsin’s top Democrat signed off on “gerrymandered.”

“Unfortunately, gerrymandered maps for members of Congress will remain in Wisconsin,” Rep. Mark Pocan, a Madison-area liberal and one of just two Democrats representing Wisconsin in Congress, told the Associated Press. Pocan noted that the court earlier this decade had approved redrawn state redistricting maps that were much more to the Democrats’ liking. 

Adam Kincaid of the National Republican Redistricting Trust called the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision “a great day for Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Constitution, and the rule of law in the Badger State.”

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court has rightly rejected the Democrats’ partisan attempt to redraw Tony Evers’ maps,” Kincaid said in a statement.