Conservatives intervene in Wisconsin’s mid-decade redistricting push as House majority hangs in the balance

FIRST ON FOX: A conservative law firm has filed two motions to intervene in separate lawsuits seeking to overturn Wisconsin’s congressional maps, arguing that imposing new districts now would violate federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority ordered two three-judge panels to take up lawsuits alleging the state’s congressional map gives Republicans an unconstitutional advantage, as redistricting fights intensify nationwide ahead of next year’s midterms.

On behalf of a group of Wisconsin voters, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) filed motions to intervene this week, arguing the challenges are time-barred and that the newly appointed panel does not have the authority to overrule the state Supreme Court’s earlier decision approving the current congressional lines.

“Revisiting congressional lines this way, less than a year before the election, sows irreparable distrust in our country’s political process,” WILL Deputy Counsel Lucas Vebber told Fox News Digital. “We intervened on behalf of several Wisconsin voters to argue that overturning the current maps in this manner and imposing new ones would violate federal law and the U.S. Constitution.”

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WILL’s motions dispute the plaintiffs’ characterizations of Wisconsin’s congressional map as a “partisan gerrymander” or “anti-competitive.”

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“These claims are all meritless,” Vebber said, noting first that any challenge to the current map should have been brought when the map was adopted. “And on the merits, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has already determined that partisan gerrymandering is not a justiciable claim here in Wisconsin.”

Vebber said the lawsuits violate federal law by pushing for districts drawn to reflect statewide partisan totals instead of local representation, and by asking courts to assume a redistricting role the Constitution assigns to state legislatures.

He also argued that a court-ordered “mid-decade redraw” would violate the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, calling it “precisely what the U.S. Supreme Court has advised state courts not to do.”

According to WILL, these motions represent the fourth and fifth time the conservative law firm has defended Wisconsin’s congressional maps in court.

When the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted the state’s current congressional map drawn by Gov. Tony Evers, D-Wisc., in 2022 following the 2020 census, WILL said that should have been “the end to the legal and political posturing until the 2030 census.” 

Instead, the group said that various organizations have repeatedly attempted to challenge the map using “a variety of legal theories.”

As redistricting battles continue nationwide, Texas recently filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court after a panel of federal judges blocked the state from using its new congressional map, ruling that several districts were “racially gerrymandered.”

Meanwhile, California voters passed Proposition 50 this year, allowing the state to move forward with a new congressional map expected to create up to five Democratic-leaning districts, in what Democrats say is an effort to counter Republican-backed redistricting efforts in states like Texas.

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Missouri and North Carolina have already redrawn congressional lines, and states like Ohio are moving ahead with new maps as redistricting battles play out in courts nationwide ahead of next year’s midterm elections with control of the House and Senate, and Trump’s legislative agenda, hanging in the balance.