High court debates Wisconsin’s case on gerrymandering

An overturn of earlier ruling could impact political landscape

The U. S. Supreme Court showed deep divisions Tuesday over a gerrymandering case from Wisconsin that could have far- reaching national implications.

Liberal justices expressed openness to the idea that courts should intervene when lawmakers draw election maps that greatly favor their party. Conservatives were skeptical that judges could come up with a way to determine whether lawmakers had gone too far.

In the middle of it all — as expected — was Justice Anthony Kennedy. Both sides see him as the one who will probably cast the deciding vote and they pitched their arguments to him.

A three- judge panel last year ruled 2- 1 that election maps for the state Assembly were so heavily Republican that they violated the constitutional rights of Democratic voters. Now, the Supreme Court must decide whether the lower court got the ruling right.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg questioned what would happen to the “precious right to vote” with election maps such as Wisconsin’s that lock in a majority for one party.

“If you can stack a legislature in this way, what incentive is there for a voter to exercise his vote?” she asked. “Whether it’s a Democratic district or a Republican district, the result — using this map, the result is preordained in most of the districts.”

Chief Justice John Roberts countered that legislatures have long been the ones in most states to determine where political lines are drawn.

“The whole point is you’re taking this issue away from democracy and throwing it to the courts,” he told the attorney for the group of Wisconsin voters who brought the case.

If they succeed, the nation’s high court will have to decide in case after case whether to throw out maps favoring one party over the other, he said. And the public will suspect the court’s rulings are based on partisanship, not the merits, he warned.

The stakes are high for Wisconsin’s Democrats, who have been out of power for seven years. The case represents one of their last shots — if not their very last shot— of gaining a foothold in the Legislature in the foreseeable future.

But it also has broad national implications. If Wisconsin’s maps are thrown out, states will have to follow new rules when they draw congressional and legislative districts, limiting their abilities to give strong edges to either party.

Every 10 years, states must draw new election maps to account for population shifts. In Wisconsin and most other states, politicians get to draw those lines.

Republicans took full control of Wisconsin’s government in 2010 and used their power to drawmaps that favor them. They drew maps with pinpoint accuracy that maximized their advantage, court records from two rounds of litigation show.

Democratic voters sued in 2015, arguing their voting rights had been violated and the panel of judges sided with them last year. ( Unlike other types of cases, redistricting lawsuits are first heard by a panel of three judges and then go directly to the Supreme Court.)

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by summer.