Districts In Wisconsin Unconstitutionally Gerrymandered, Judges Rule

A panel of three federal judges this week found that Wisconsin’s legislature went too far in redrawing State Assembly district lines in 2011, creating an unconstitutional gerrymander.  Federal courts in the past have struck down gerrymanders for being racially motivated, but the ruling marks the first time such a ruling was based on unfair advantage given to one political party. The difference is that the case offered, for the first time, a clear mathematical formula for measuring partisanship in a district. “It does almost exactly what [Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy] said he was looking for back in the 80s, a clear threshold for deciding what is acceptable,” Barry C. Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the New York Times. According to the lawsuit, in the 2012 elections for the Assembly Wisconsin Republicans won 48.6 percent of the two-party vote, but took 61 percent of the Assembly’s 99 seats. Courts have generally agreed that creating partisan advantage in redrawing districts is tolerable, in part because voters are not spread equally across a state, but the suit argued that the case in Wisconsin was a particularly egregious case. It may now be headed to the Supreme Court. If the Court rules, the case has the potential to drastically impact the next redistricting period, in 2021.