Wisconsin court dismisses challenge to Republican gerrymandered congressional map

A Wisconsin court Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the state’s congressional map, effectively shutting down any legal path to fairer maps before the 2026 midterms.

The ruling marks the end, for this year, of a legal effort to redraw Wisconsin’s heavily skewed congressional districts, leaving in place a map widely criticized for favoring Republicans in a closely divided state.

With two cases now thrown out and no active challenges pending, the current map is all but certain to remain in place through the next election cycle.

In its decision, a three-judge panel rejected the argument that Wisconsin’s congressional map is an “anti-competitive gerrymander” designed to suppress electoral competition and entrench incumbents. The court leaned on prior Wisconsin Supreme Court precedent to conclude it could not intervene.

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court has held that claims of the sort Plaintiffs allege are not actionable under Wisconsin law,” the panel wrote. “The panel is left with no option but to dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims.”  

That conclusion follows a similar ruling last month, when another panel dismissed a separate lawsuit arguing the map was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. 

Despite Wisconsin’s reputation as a 50-50 battleground state, Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats — a disparity critics attribute to aggressive GOP gerrymandering.

Plaintiffs in the latest case argued that this lack of competition violates core principles of democracy embedded in the Wisconsin Constitution — including equal protection and the right to vote. They asked the court to strike down the map and order a new one with more competitive districts.

But the panel said those arguments run headlong into binding precedent from the state’s highest court, which has already ruled that questions about partisan fairness in redistricting are political — not legal — disputes.

“Until the Supreme Court says otherwise, Plaintiffs’ claims are non-justiciable and non-cognizable under Wisconsin law,” the court wrote. “The Wisconsin Constitution contains ‘no plausible grant of authority’ to the judiciary to determine whether maps are fair to the major parties.”

In plain terms, that means courts say they lack both the authority and the legal standards to decide whether a map is too partisan or insufficiently competitive — even if the results appear skewed.

For voting rights advocates, the outcome is a stark setback. With the Wisconsin Supreme Court declining to take up earlier challenges and lower courts bound by its precedent, there is now no active litigation targeting the congressional map.

Barring an appeal or a dramatic shift from the state Supreme Court, the current districts — drawn under a “least-change” approach that preserved much of an earlier Republican-backed map — will govern the 2026 midterms.