Three-judge panel finds the Wisconsin partisan gerrymander has violated both First and Fourteenth Amendments

From the Brennan Center:

In a potentially transformative decision, a three-judge panel has ruled that Wisconsin’s 2011 state assembly redistricting plan is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The 2-1 decision — which came down early last week in Whitford v. Gill— found that the plan violated both the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Historically, courts have struggled to identify manageable standards for assessing partisan gerrymandering claims. The issue has even perplexed the U.S. Supreme Court, which infamously fractured over it in Vieth v. Jubelier (2004) and LULAC v. Perry (2006).

As the Brennan Center’s Thomas Wolf explained, the Whitford panel broke through that impasse, offering a three-part test for evaluating partisan-gerrymandering claims and concluding that Wisconsin’s challenged map failed it: the mapmakers had the intent to “imped[e] … the effectiveness of the votes” cast by Democratic voters; they succeeded in drawing a map that actually did so; and there were no “legitimate, legislative grounds” to justify what they had done. As the panel concluded, the Wisconsin gerrymander was “an aggressive [one],” that would give Republicans a majority of state assembly seats “in any likely electoral scenario.”

Although the panel ruled that the redistricting plan was unconstitutional, it requested that the parties submit additional briefing on the right remedy. The parties will conclude that briefing in early January 2017. Soon after, the case could find itself on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.