Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 72. Sunrise is 6:37 and sunset is 7:01 for 12 hours 24 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 37.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1787, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention endorse the Constitution created during the four-month-long convention.
Yesterday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments on whether it should accept cases challenging Wisconsin’s congressional district maps as unlawfully gerrymandered. The question before the state’s high court was whether to take up challenges to these maps (a necessary preliminary to deciding the cases on the merits):
Members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court seemed open to redrawing the state’s U.S. House districts during oral arguments for two lawsuits claiming the current congressional map is gerrymandered.
The court’s liberal majority is considering whether to allow the cases seeking a new map before the 2028 election to proceed after panels of circuit court judges dismissed them this summer.
Both cases allege gerrymandering, but by different means. The suit from national Democratic firm Elias Law Group argues Republicans drew the map as a partisan gerrymander to keep their party in the majority. The suit from the liberal firm Law Forward argues the House map is an anti-competitive gerrymander, aimed at protecting incumbents.
Attorneys representing Republican members of Congress and the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature disputed those claims and argued plaintiffs are asking the court to go rogue by cutting lawmakers out of the redistricting process.
Debate on the merits of the suits lasted nearly eight hours Wednesday. Both cases argue the current 6-2 GOP majority in Wisconsin’s congressional delegation was designed by Republican legislators who drew the map in 2011. Then, the suits argue, that gerrymander was cemented by the Supreme Court’s former conservative majority in 2022 when it ordered a new House map with the least changes possible.
See Rich Kremer, Wisconsin justices hear congressional gerrymandering arguments, Wisconsin Public Radio, September 16, 2026. The cases are Bothfeld v. Wis. Elections Comm’n, No. 2026AP1168 and Wis. Bus. Leaders for Democracy v. Wis. Elections Comm’n, No. 2026AP1008. Audio recordings of the September 16, 2026 oral argument before the Wisconsin Supreme Court are available online.
Kremer correctly highlights a key question in this matter, about an earlier ruling of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to apply a ‘least change’ standard when evaluating redistricting of the congressional maps:
Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, who is among the court’s liberal majority, wasn’t a fan of the least change requirement either.
“Least change says we are going to bake in whatever the political motivations were of that 2011 Legislature, and we’re going to bake it in for perpetuity,” Karofsky said. “And we continue to follow least change in 2021 and in 2031 and 2041 and 2051.”Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, who was part of the court’s majority that endorsed the least change directive, took issue with a claim that it gave “blind deference” to partisan gerrymandering. He said plaintiffs would have to prove justices intended to help Republicans, when the court explicitly said it didn’t.
“We said we don’t mean to do anything for partisan advantage,” said Hagedorn. “In fact, we mean to exclude that entirely from our consideration.”
‘Least change’ is, fundamentally, the issue here. Insulating least change from challenge absent a showing of intentionality leaves, practically and consequentially, a perpetual gerrymander of the WISGOP-created maps going forward, no matter how significantly voters’ legislative preferences might change.
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Forthcoming topics (in no particular order): A New Ethics Ordinance, Development in Downtown Whitewater (follow-up), and Steps for a Public Interest Campaign.
Fly to a Stellar Nursery with Views from the James Webb Space Telescope: