Partisan Impact? Rejecting the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s New Remedial Redistricting Criterion

Authors

Anthony Sikorski

Abstract

In Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the districting maps for the Wisconsin Legislature that the court had adopted at the close of the Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission trilogy of cases. In so doing, while the Clarke majority based its decision on the maps containing noncontiguous districts, in violation of article IV, sections 4 and 5 of the Wisconsin Constitution, it not-so-subtly introduced a new criterion that would be used to judge remedial maps: “partisan impact.” This Comment critiques the partisan impact criterion through a textualist lens, concluding that the Wisconsin Constitution does not prohibit the Wisconsin Legislature from drawing legislative or congressional maps to benefit a political party. Along the way, this Comment discusses fundamental federal and state redistricting principles, traces the legal and political history underlying the Johnson trilogy and Clarke, and delves into nineteenth-century dictionaries and the debates from Wisconsin’s second constitutional convention. With new lawsuits emerging against Wisconsin’s 2022 congressional map, this Comment urges the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reverse its error in Clarke and to declare partisan gerrymandering a nonjusticiable political question to be properly remedied by the people and their elected representatives.

Repository Citation

Anthony Sikorski, Partisan Impact? Rejecting the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s New Remedial Redistricting Criterion, 109 Marq. L. Rev. 455 (2025).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol109/iss1/1