Wisconsin GOP gets high court to junk electoral maps | Courthouse News Service

The United States Supreme Court found a way again to dilute the Black vote.  Last month it stayed an Alabama federal three judge District Court's ruling approving a second majority Black district in the state's seven Member congressional delegation.  Six weeks before the start of mail voting and three and a half months before election day in a Congressional primary was too close to the election, said Justice Kavanaugh and Alito in a concurring opinion.  The majority issued no opinion at all. 

Today the court - using its emergency (shadow) docket - converted the Wisconsin GOP's application for a stay into an expedited grant of a petition for certiorari and summarily reversed the order of a Republican state Supreme Court judge who - faced with two maps - chose the Democrats' as making the smallest change in existing Wisconsin legislative districts.

But one more Black seat was one too much for the six reactionary judges on the high court. 

The 14th Amendment - which the rightist judges found to be violated - empowers Congress to enforce it by `appropriate legislation'.  But the Court has developed a several tier test of what is appropriate.  Strict scrutiny, intermediate, and rational basis review.  It has settled on the hierarchy of which  Justice David Souter famously wrote in his dissenting opinion in Alameda Books v. City of Los Angeles (2002), “Strict scrutiny leaves few survivors.” ' - GWC

Wisconsin GOP gets high court to junk electoral maps | Courthouse News Service

By Kelsey Reichmann March 23, 2022 

WASHINGTON (CN) — Republican lawmakers succeeded Wednesday at discarding new electoral maps for Wisconsin that created an extra majority-Black district.

The lawmakers had sought an emergency injunction against the maps, having failed to secure relief from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court treated the application as a petition for certiorari, and it summarily reversed the lower court’s order without the benefit of oral arguments.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, dissented. It is otherwise unclear who signed on to the majority’s unsigned opinion.

Like other states greeting new population numbers after the 2020 census, the Wisconsin Legislature adopted new maps to reapportion its state assembly and senate. When the maps were vetoed, however, by Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, the state Supreme Court stepped in and had parties propose new maps based on the state constitution, the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. The Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted Evers' proposal, which included the creation of one more majority-Black district in Milwaukee. Wisconsin Republicans then turned to the high court. 

Lawmakers claimed the new maps made the state home to a “21st-century racial gerrymander,” and that the state Supreme Court adopted them based on a rewriting of the Voting Rights Act. They also claim the governor’s map violates the Equal Protection Clause.

The court’s majority agreed, leaning on its precedent in Cooper v. Harris. Using Cooper, the court said if a state is going to use Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to justify race-based districting, it must show strong evidence for why that would be required. 

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court concluded that the Governor’s intentional addition of a seventh majority-black district triggered the Equal Protection Clause and that Cooper’s strict-scrutiny test must accordingly be satisfied,” the majority wrote. “Accepting those conclusions, we hold that the court erred in its efforts to apply Cooper’s understanding of what the Equal Protection Clause requires.” 

Justices in the majority said Evers’ additional majority-Black district did not hold up to strict scrutiny.