Law Firm Asking State Supreme Court to Reconsider State's Congressional Map Ahead of 2024 Election

Wednesday, January 17th, 2024 -- 12:01 PM

(Lawrence Andrea, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) A high-powered Democratic law firm is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reconsider the state’s congressional map ahead of the 2024 election, arguing a redistricting decision last month calls into question the battleground state’s current district lines.

According to Lawrence Andrea with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Elias Law Group, chaired by Marc Elias, who has led previous voting access lawsuits in Wisconsin and across the country, filed the motion to revisit Wisconsin’s congressional district lines on Tuesday.

The group aims to have a new map in place for the 2024 election, though those plans likely face a tight deadline with under 11 months to go before the November election.

The filing, brought by Elias’ firm on behalf of a group of four Wisconsin voters, leans on a state Supreme Court ruling last month ordering new legislative boundaries in which the high court said it would no longer favor maps that minimize changes to existing boundary lines. 

That decision effectively nullified a 2021 ruling from the then-conservative court that held that new state election maps needed to resemble those drawn in 2011, which cemented Republican control of the legislature and a majority of the state’s House seats.

It was under that “least change” approach that the current congressional maps were drawn. The Tuesday motion said last month’s ruling rejecting that approach warrants replacing the current congressional map with new boundaries in a process free from what the firm called the “flawed” least change requirement.

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