MADISON, Wis. (CN) - A novel judicial panel appointed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected another bid to overturn the congressional maps in the state on Tuesday, its hands tied by precedent of the court which formed it.

"The Wisconsin Supreme Court has held that claims of the sort plaintiffs allege are not actionable under Wisconsin law, and this panel, as an inferior tribunal exercising powers of a circuit court, has no authority to modify or overrule that precedent,"  the panel said in its 13-page opinion dismissing the case.

The judges held on Tuesday that the novel anti-competitive gerrymandering claims brought by liberal voting watchdog group Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy is functionally identical to a partisan gerrymandering claim.

Partisan and anti-competitive gerrymandering overlap, they reasoned, because both are difficult to ascertain in a swing state which does not require party registration for voting. Both are left to the state Legislature to work out.

The panel is comprised of Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Conway, Portage County Circuit Court Judge Patricia Baker and Marathon County Circuit Court Judge Michael Moran.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court considered a partisan gerrymandering claim in the Johnson litigation of 2021 when Billie Johnson - who intervened in this case - successfully had the 2011 map overturned due to incorrect population tallying.

In that case, the court ruled in a split decision that partisan gerrymandering is a non-justiciable political question. In other words, it isn't for the courts to decide whether a map is politically fair.

"In sum, the panel is unable to meaningfully distinguish between 'fairness' and 'competitiveness' for the purposes of Johnson I," the panel said Tuesday. "It necessarily follows that the Constitution also contains no grant of authority to determine whether maps are competitive between the major parties."

The Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy brought its case last July in Dane County Circuit Court before it was removed to the high court and the panel appointed in November 2025. State lawmakers intervened in the case in January, arguing against the panel's authority.

The group claimed that the state's congressional map has unfairly favored incumbent candidates, who are frequently Republican, since 2011. That map was challenged at the time as an extreme partisan gerrymander, and the high court stepped in to make edits using the "least-change" principle.

The court used the same approach again to alter the 2020 map, which was remarkably similar to the 2011 map, including many of the gerrymandering concerns.

The Wisconsin Business Leaders argued before the panel that the recycling of the 2011 map has maintained an unfair safety for Republican incumbents and must be totally redrawn rather than tweaked only slightly as in decades past.

The group argued alternatively that the Wisconsin Constitution prohibits anti-competitive gerrymandering - specifically articles one through three, which require free government representative of the people.

However, this argument was also disposed of in the Johnson litigation when the court ruled that those sections have never been understood to regulate partisanship in redistricting.

"The Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of our state Constitution," the panel wrote. "When the court speaks, its words are final unless and until it says otherwise. Because this panel is bound by the court's interpretations, it must alternatively dismiss plaintiffs' claims."

The Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy could not be immediately reached for comment.

A parallel lawsuit brought in Dane County Circuit Court by a group of voters, led by Elizabeth Bothfeld of Dodgeville, was tossed earlier this month by another appointed panel.

The Bothfeld panel similarly held that it lacked authority to overturn the congressional map imposed by the court that convened them.

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

Dane Courty Circuit Court Judge Julie Genovese, Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Emily Lonergan and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Mark Sanders struggled to find their footing in the Bothfeld case without clear instruction from the justices.

While the panel judges found they could rely on earlier redistricting litigation to remove the "least-change" mandate when adopting remedial maps, any steps beyond that point into fairness were unsteady.

"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.

Top Wisconsin Republicans are retiring in droves as midterms creep up in the swing state, when every assembly seat and half of senate seats will be up for grabs.

New legislative maps adopted in 2024 coupled with strong momentum in recent Supreme Court elections could give Democrats the leg up they needed to secure a trifecta in the three branches.

Source: Courthouse News Service