MADISON, Wis. (CN) - Restrained by a lack of clear authority, a novel judicial panel appointed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court shot down a bid to overturn gerrymandered congressional maps.

"This panel is not endorsing the current congressional map," the panel said. "Rather we, as circuit court judges, do not have the authority to read into a Wisconsin Supreme Court case an analysis that it does not contain."

Neither the state Supreme Court nor the statute under which the panel was assembled offered the judges any clear guidance on the path it can chart forward in the redistricting case brought by a group of voters led by Elizabeth Bothfeld of Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

The panel has grappled with that existential question since it was convened in November 2025. Bothfeld first filed her complaint in July 2025 against the Wisconsin Election Commission.

"Is this panel a circuit court, an arm of the state supreme court, a referee or something else? Is the mission purely factfinding, or is the panel authorized to rule on legal issues too?" the panel wrote in its 18-page opinion Tuesday.

Because the statute says the panel should be comprised of circuit court judges, it concluded it would behave as such.

The panel featured Dane County Circuit Court Judge Julie Genovese, Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Emily Lonergan and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Mark Sanders.

After the 2020 census, the GOP-controlled Legislature redrew the legislative and congressional district maps as it does every 10 years. Democratic Governor Tony Evers vetoed those maps when they crossed his desk in 2021, leaving the 2011 maps in effect.

Billie Johnson filed an original action in the state Supreme Court for redistricting. In his case, the court found the 2011 maps were unconstitutional because they didn't reflect the population tallied in the most recent census.

The justices applied a "least change" approach when fashioning remedial maps, which altered the 2011 maps only enough to come into compliance with state and federal law. The court adopted new maps in 2022 that were nearly identical to the 2011 maps, which are widely considered to contain extreme partisan gerrymandering.

One year later, the court abdicated the least change approach in Clarke, a challenge to partisan legislative maps.

Bothfeld challenged the remedial congressional map adopted in 2022 by the state Supreme Court, arguing that the justices failed to use independent judgement when it employed the now defunct least change approach.

By abdicating the least change approach, Bothfeld claimed, the court invalidated the remedial map adopted in Johnson. However, the panel noted that the Clarke decision did not contain a separation of powers analysis, and so they cannot make one here.

"While the panel can rely on Clarke to remove the least-change mandate when adopting remedial maps, the panel cannot conclude on its own that our highest court in the Johnson II decision violated the separation of powers doctrine," the panel said.

In other words, only the Wisconsin Supreme Court can find that it violated the separation of powers when it applied the least change approach and adopted remedial maps that had been gerrymandered to favor state Republicans.

On Bothfeld's additional partisan gerrymandering claims, the panel held similarly. The Wisconsin Supreme Court held in the Johnson litigation that partisan gerrymandering is a nonjusticiable political question, so the panel cannot overrule or modify that language to grant relief here.

The panel concluded with a caveat that, should the state Supreme Court offer more guidance or make rulings on these issues, the panel would reconvene to conduct factfinding.

"Should the Wisconsin Supreme Court determine that it did indeed abdicate its authority and that the neutral redistricting criteria outlined in Clarke should control, we stand ready to apply that standard and engage in any necessary factfinding the court deems appropriate," the panel said.

Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School's State Democracy Research Initiative, told Courthouse News when the redistricting cases were filed that the panel should have the authority to conduct factfinding without overturning the maps.

The conclusion of this case leaves open questions for the second case brought against the Wisconsin Election Commission by the Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy, a left-leaning voting rights group challenging the congressional map's gerrymander in favor of incumbent candidates.

Tuesday's decision can be appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but it is unclear whether it will take up the case after rejecting Bothfeld's petition for original action before the high court in May 2025.

The Wisconsin Election Commission could not be reached for comment by press time. Wisconsin voters will head to the polls April 7 to choose a candidate to replace Justice Rebecca Bradley, who announced her retirement in August 2025.  

Source: Courthouse News Service