'America's worst gerrymander' officially overturned by Wisconsin Supreme Court

In a 4-3 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has overturned legislative maps drawn by GOP lawmakers that overwhelmingly favored Republicans.

According to the ruling, the Badger State will now have to submit new maps in advance of the 2024 election, though it declined to invalidate the results of 2022 state senate elections conducted with the gerrymandered maps. Liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz, who was elected earlier this year, cast the deciding vote to eliminate the GOP-drawn maps.

"Wisconsin's state legislative districts must be composed of physically adjoining territory. The constitutional text and our precedent support this common-sense interpretation of contiguity," the decision read. "Because the current state legislative districts contain separate, detached territory and therefore violate the constitution's contiguity requirements, we enjoin the Wisconsin Elections Commission from using the current legislative maps in future elections."

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Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern tweeted that the decision "does NOT affect Wisconsin’s congressional maps" and "involves only the state legislature," but added that the decision was "still a really big deal." He also noted that Protasiewicz "basically ran on delivering this decision to the people."

According to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, Wisconsin's state legislative maps are among the most unfair in the country, with Princeton giving "F" grades to both the state assembly map and the state senate map in 2022. And Vox.com's Ian Millhiser referred to the Wisconsin state legislative map as "America's worst gerrymander" in an August article.

"Indeed, Wisconsin’s Republican gerrymander is so aggressive that it is practically impossible for Democrats to gain control of the state legislature," Millhiser wrote. "In 2018, for example, Democratic state assembly candidates received 54 percent of the popular vote in Wisconsin, but Republicans still won 63 of the assembly’s 99 seats — just three seats short of the two-thirds supermajority Republicans would need to override a gubernatorial veto."

Republicans in the Badger State may still control the state legislature in 2024, given what Stern called "a big concession" from the state's high court. Because the ruling didn't negate the 2022 state senate elections, and because state senators hold four-year terms, half of Wisconsin's state senators will run under the new maps next year, with the other half not having to win reelection under fairer maps until 2026.

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