40 Harmed Voters, From 34 Wisconsin Districts File Amended Lawsuit Challenging Extreme Gerrymandering

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Protesters hold signs for fair maps at the U.S. Supreme Court
Fair maps activists demonstrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

In our continued battle to end partisan gerrymandering, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), along with co-counsel, filed an amended complaint challenging Wisconsin’s 2011 state assembly map as a partisan gerrymander in the U.S. District Court in Wisconsin.

In June the Supreme Court declined to address the merits of the lower court’s decision. However, in the Supreme Court’s opinion, Chief Justice Roberts gave instructions to provide evidence proving that the state’s redistricting plan inflicted district-specific harm on plaintiffs by diluting their votes, as well as infringing all 40 plaintiffs’ associational rights.

CLC and co-counsel are now representing voters in 34 state legislative districts and have added 28 new plaintiffs. The amended complaint includes additional evidence about district-specific harm to make it clear that plaintiffs with 14th Amendment claims have standing to challenge their district boundaries as diluting their vote, and that plaintiffs with claims under the First Amendment have standing to challenge the whole map because their political association rights have been violated.

It’s time for the courts to stop hesitating and start protecting the fundamental right to vote from the harms caused by the distortions of gerrymandering.

 “The voters of Wisconsin have had to vote under an unconstitutional map for far too long,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Bill Whitford, the named plaintiff in the case. “We followed the Supreme Court’s roadmap and entered additional evidence into the record that strengthened our case, showing real harms to voters caused by lawmakers who chose their own partisan self-interest over the good of the state. We hope to return to the Supreme Court as soon as possible.”

  • Learn more about the bipartisan effort to curb the practice of partisan gerrymandering nationwide
  • View the results of the first-ever bipartisan survey on partisan gerrymandering and the Supreme Court
  • Visit CLC’s case page to see all legal filings in the case, Gill v. Whitford

*Private counsel working with CLC in representing the plaintiffs includes Douglas M. Poland of Rathje & Woodward, Peter G. Earle of the Law Office of Peter G. Earle, LLC, Michele L. Odorizzi of Mayer Brown, Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos of the University of Chicago Law School and Jessica R. Amunson of Jenner & Block.