Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Commission
The Supreme Court threw out the Wisconsin Supreme Court's newly adopted redistricting maps, ruling that the state court had not done nearly enough legal work to justify drawing a seventh majority-Black Assembly district based on race.
The decision sends Wisconsin's maps back to be redrawn before the state's August primary and sharpens the proof a court or state official must provide before accepting race-based district lines as required by the Voting Rights Act.
How it got here: The Wisconsin Supreme Court selected redistricting maps in an original action; the legislature and affected voters sought an emergency stay, which the Supreme Court converted into a cert petition and summarily decided.
The Case in Depth
What happened
After the 2020 census showed Wisconsin's legislative districts were unequally apportioned, the state legislature and governor could not agree on new maps. The Wisconsin Supreme Court stepped in, accepted proposed maps from all parties, and chose the governor's maps — which added a seventh majority-Black Assembly district in the Milwaukee area — concluding those maps were consistent with the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.
The question before the Court
Did the Wisconsin Supreme Court improperly select race-based redistricting maps without enough legal justification under the Constitution's equal-protection rules and the Voting Rights Act?
The Court's answer
No — the Wisconsin Supreme Court did not do enough legal work to justify selecting maps drawn around race. Under the Court's precedents, when a state draws district lines where race is the predominant factor, it must show it had a strong basis in evidence for concluding the Voting Rights Act actually required those race-based choices — not merely that the Act might require them. The Wisconsin court explicitly said it could not be certain seven majority-Black districts were required, only that they "may" be — the wrong legal standard.
The court also failed on two additional fronts: instead of examining the Voting Rights Act's three required preconditions district by district, it relied on vague, undisputed generalizations; and rather than weighing the full range of factors the Act requires, it focused exclusively on whether minority representation was proportional to population. Both shortcuts violated the Court's precedents, so the maps cannot stand.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
State courts overseeing redistricting — and government officials drawing maps — must conduct a detailed, district-by-district analysis before using race to draw district lines, even when they believe federal voting-rights law requires it. Pointing to undisputed party submissions or focusing only on whether minority districts are proportional to population share is not enough to satisfy the Constitution.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which must redo its analysis under the proper legal standards in time for the state's August 9 primary election. The court may take additional evidence if it wants to reconsider the governor's maps, or choose from the other maps already submitted by the parties. Any new analysis must comply with the Supreme Court's equal-protection rules.
What this does not decide
The ruling does not decide whether seven majority-Black Assembly districts in Milwaukee are ultimately required by the Voting Rights Act — it only says the Wisconsin court's reasoning was legally insufficient. A properly conducted analysis on remand could still justify seven such districts.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor argued the Court's summary reversal was unprecedented and unnecessary. She contended that it was not even clear the Cooper v. Harris framework — designed for lawsuits challenging already-enacted maps — applies when a state court is selecting maps in the first instance with no equal-protection claim formally before it. She also noted that courts generally are not required to independently investigate issues the parties have conceded, such as the Gingles preconditions here, and that the Wisconsin court rightly preserved the option for a proper challenge in the appropriate forum.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- When a state draws district lines where race is the predominant factor, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment — which prohibits unequal treatment based on race — requires strict scrutiny: the state must have a very strong reason for using race and must show the race-based design is no broader than necessary to achieve that reason.
- The Court's precedent in Cooper v. Harris (2017) allows states to use race in redistricting to comply with the Voting Rights Act, but only if the state had a 'strong basis in evidence' for concluding the Act actually required the race-based action. The Wisconsin court found only that seven majority-Black districts 'may' be required, which the Court held is categorically insufficient — the question is whether the mapmaker judged the action necessary, not just possibly justified.
- The Gingles framework — the three-part test established in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) for proving that minority voting power is being unlawfully diluted — requires careful, district-level evaluation of each precondition. The Wisconsin Supreme Court instead relied on broad, undisputed party submissions for all three preconditions, making no effort to parse data at the district level, which Cooper explicitly requires.
- The Court also faulted the Wisconsin court for collapsing the 'totality of circumstances' inquiry — the full review of many factors including a Senate-enumerated list — into a single metric: whether the number of majority-Black districts was roughly proportional to the Black share of the population. The Court reaffirmed its holding in Johnson v. De Grandy (1994) that proportionality alone can never be a shortcut for the full analysis.
- The key question the Wisconsin court never properly answered is whether a race-neutral alternative — one that did not add a seventh majority-Black district — would have denied Black voters equal political opportunity. Answering that requires an intensely local appraisal of each challenged district, which the court failed to provide.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Cooper v. Harris (581 U. S. ___)
States must have a strong basis in evidence that the Voting Rights Act required race-based districting, not merely that it might.
Reaffirms Thornburg v. Gingles (478 U. S. 30)
Courts must carefully evaluate the three Gingles preconditions at the district level, not through generalizations.
Reaffirms Johnson v. De Grandy (512 U. S. 997)
Proportionality of minority representation can never substitute for a full totality-of-circumstances analysis.