Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 69. Sunrise is 5:38 and sunset is 8:04, for 14 hours, 26 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 91.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1974, the United States House Committee on the Judiciary opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Nixon.
There are now two lawsuits filed against the current apportionment of Wisconsin’s Congressional districts. A story from WPR does a good job of summarizing the petitions (each filed in state court).
First, the story from WPR:
One of the petitions was filed by the Democratic firm Elias Law Group. It claims the state’s congressional map, endorsed by the court’s former conservative majority in 2021, violates several sections of the Wisconsin Constitution.
The case claims the map violates Democratic voters’ rights to free speech and association under the state constitution because despite nearly equal numbers of Democratic and Republican votes in Wisconsin’s statewide elections, the GOP has been able to hold six of eight congressional districts.
“This congressional map directly discriminates against Petitioners, who support Democratic candidates in Wisconsin and—because of that affiliation—are effectively silenced and shut out from casting a meaningful congressional vote,” the lawsuit states. “Wisconsin’s Constitution prohibits this injustice several times over. This Court should grant this original action and replace the adopted congressional map with a lawful alternative.”
….
The Campaign Legal Center’s challenge [petition here] claims the congressional map violates the state constitution’s guarantee of equality because it “does not equally apportion population among Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts.”
The suit also focused on the number of counties that were split when the current congressional map was approved by the court three years ago. It claims the former conservative majority erroneously put more importance on the “least changes” directive than “traditional redistricting” principles in the Wisconsin Constitution, like minimizing the number of counties that are split to form congressional districts. It alleges an “eight district map need only have seven county splits to achieve population equality” while the current map has 12.“Thus, in addition to being unequally populated, the current congressional map is an improper court-imposed remedy because it elevated ‘least change’ over Wisconsin’s traditional redistricting criteria of minimizing county splits, resulting in the needless splitting apart of counties (and therefore communities of interest),” the lawsuit states.
See Rich Kremer, 2 lawsuits challenging Wisconsin’s congressional map filed with state Supreme Court (‘The cases look to overturn Wisconsin’s congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms’), Wisconsin Public Radio, May 8, 2025.
Second, while I’ve read both petitions, but have read only the accompanying memorandum of law in the Campaign Legal Center’s filing, I’ll not offer an opinion on the relative strengths of the respective cases. (Proper practice is to see both petition and memorandum from each.)
Easiest, most obvious contention, however: there’s much ahead, in state (and likely federal) court.
Underwater volcano off Pacific coast could soon erupt: