(John Ransom, Headline USA) After the Republican Party of Wisconsin challenged the race-based redistricting map drawn by Democrat Gov. Tony Evers, the US Supreme Court threw out the governor’s map for state legislative districts and ordered both sides to come up with a new map.
Hey @GovEvers, remember when you said “hell yes” after the Wisconsin Supreme Court approved your legislative maps? The US Supreme Court just said “hell yes, you’re an idiot.” https://t.co/qNrs069fHM
— Dan O’Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) March 23, 2022
“In Wisconsin—just as everywhere—racially gerrymandering districts perpetuates the very harm that the Voting Rights Act was enacted to eliminate,” Republicans wrote in the application to the Supreme Court according to the Epoch Times.
In its decision, the Supreme Court said that race-based maps may not be a violation of the equal protection clause; however, the burden of proof was on the governor and the Wisconsin courts to show that, without a race-based map, blacks would lose voting rights, which the Wisconsin court did not do, according to Epoch Times.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan both dissented from the ruling of the majority.
However, the GOP victory wasn’t complete, as the Supreme Court refused to throw out the new US congressional maps drawn up by the governor, said NBC News.
Those maps continue to favor Republicans by a 5 to 3 majority, according to NBC, unchanged from the previous maps.
It is unclear whether Republicans would have gained congressional seats in the redrawn maps that the state legislature originally put forward. Like many parts of the country, high crime rates and poor economic conditions may have led to an exodus of citizens from predominantly blue areas such as Detroit and Kenosha, dilluting traditionally red districts while also giving them more voting power.
That has not stopped left-wing operatives, including Eric Holder’s oligarch-backed National Democratic Redistricting Committee from systematically waging “sue-till-blue” lawfare suits in many red states that saw gains over the last decade, with activist judges at the state level often putting their thumb on the scales in Democracts’ favor.
Half a dozen or more state redistricting maps are up for legal judgment, said NBC News
In a particularly egregious example, a ruling to circumvent the North Carolina legislature’s constitutionally designated redistricting authority came down to the vote of a single judge on the state Supreme Court, Anita Earls, who had previously accepted an estimated $200,000 in campaign cash funneled through the NDRC.
Earls, who had been the lead lawyer in a 2016 redistricting lawsuit to force the maps to be redrawn, won the 2018 race after a Democrat activist switched his party affiliation at the last minute and split the vote with incumbent Republican Judge Barbara Jackson.
In North Carolina and Pennsylvania, however, the US Supreme Court refused to hear GOP appeals on the basis that it was too close to the state primaries.
Nonetheless, the Wisconsin case may give an indication to how the Supreme Court will decide a similar upcoming redistricting fight for Alabama, which also involves raced-based mapping for districts said the New York Times.
In the Alabama case, the court will look at congressional districts, not state legislative districts, and will deal with a federal court decision, not a state court decision, as was the case in Wisconsin said the Times.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
