Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission

The 2020 census revealed that Wisconsin’s voting districts no longer complied with either state or federal law. The governor and the state legislature could not agree on a revised map. Through the case of Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the state courts became involved and ordered each side to submit proposed maps. The state courts chose the governor’s map, but the United States Supreme Court ruled that the governor’s map violated the federal Equal Protection Clause because it increased the number of Black-majority districts without sufficient explanation. On remand in Johnson, in 2022, the state courts selected the legislature’s proposed district map. In the Johnson case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court acknowledged that the state constitution required that districts be “contiguous” and that some of the districts in the legislature’s proposed map were not physically connected. The court’s opinion in Johnson stated that those piecemeal districts still qualified as legally contiguous because any physically detached, island-like portions were legally part of a municipality that was in the district’s main body. In 2023, an election changed the composition of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. A few months later, two voter groups, the governor, and some state senators (plaintiffs) petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court to enjoin the Wisconsin Elections Commission (defendant) from using the map approved in 2022 in Johnson. This lawsuit contended that the current map violated the state constitutional requirement that all districts be contiguous because 50 of the 99 state assembly districts and 20 of the 33 senate districts included territory that was physically separated from the rest of the district. The supreme court agreed to consider the petition.