Wisconsin’s congressional maps are headed back to the state Supreme Court Wednesday, but before the justices ever decide whether the districts are constitutional, they will have to sort through an unusual legal mess of their own making.
Two separate lawsuits are seeking to overturn Wisconsin’s current congressional districts, which were proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and adopted by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2022. Both lawsuits have already been tossed by specially appointed three-judge circuit court panels consisting primarily of liberal judges.
The reason? In both cases, the lower-court judges essentially concluded they could not overrule the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That is particularly notable because it was the Supreme Court that appointed the panels in the first place.
When the lawsuits were filed last year, the Supreme Court invoked a little-used state law requiring certain redistricting challenges to be heard by panels of three circuit court judges. Conservative Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley immediately raised constitutional objections.
The Wisconsin Constitution places the Supreme Court above the state’s circuit courts. Bradley argued that the Legislature cannot overcome that hierarchy by passing a statute empowering lower-court judges to reconsider a final Supreme Court judgment.
“The Wisconsin Constitution is superior to the Wisconsin Statutes,” Bradley wrote.
Ziegler similarly argued that the panels were being asked to reconsider congressional maps the Supreme Court had already adopted — something she maintained circuit judges simply do not have the constitutional authority to do.
Then came the strange part: the panels themselves effectively ran into the problem Ziegler and Bradley had warned about.
In March, the panel hearing Bothfeld v. Wisconsin Elections Commission dismissed the challenge without determining that the Evers maps were constitutional or free from partisan considerations. Instead, the circuit judges concluded they were bound by Wisconsin Supreme Court precedent.
A second three-judge panel dismissed a separate challenge in April on similar grounds.
Now both cases have been appealed back to the same Supreme Court that created these panels–and the ongoing constitutional dilemma–in the first place.
Redistricting Loomed Over Supreme Court Campaigns
The cases also return to a court where redistricting has featured prominently in recent judicial campaigns.
During her successful 2023 campaign, Justice Janet Protasiewicz repeatedly described Wisconsin’s electoral maps as “rigged” and “unfair.” Those comments later became the basis of unsuccessful efforts to force her recusal from litigation over the state legislative maps.
Redistricting surfaced again during Justice Susan Crawford’s 2025 campaign.
Crawford participated in a Democratic donor briefing that was promoted to attendees as a “chance to put two more House seats in play for 2026.” The invitation said her victory could help Democrats win two additional congressional seats, currently held by Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil, with the implication being that a Crawford victory would mean the Supreme Court re-drawing the two battleground districts to be more favorable to Democrats.
It is believed by some that the Supreme Court’s controversial and convoluted decision to kick the redistricting debate to panels of circuit court judges rather than initially deciding it themselves was a way for the current liberal justices to avoid calls for recusal or accusations of pre-judging the case based on their campaign rhetoric. However, their unusual and likely unconstitutional decision to pass the buck onto lower courts has now come before the very Court who made the decision in the first place.
Should the Supreme Court determine that the three-judge panels do have the power to overrule the State Supreme Court, the consequences could extend far beyond congressional maps. The ruling could set a new precedent that completely upends the hierarchy and the balance of the Wisconsin judicial system itself.
