In dissent, Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler wrote that Mr. Evers had overemphasized race in drawing his map.
“History is littered with racial animus, hostility, discrimination” and disparate treatment, she wrote. “The equal protection clause demands that governments in the United States rise above the human temptation of dividing by race and treat individuals how basic dignity demands they be treated: as individuals.”
In response, lawyers for Mr. Evers, a Democrat, said that the Legislature and the voters who filed the emergency application had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue; that it was too late for the Supreme Court to intervene given the preparations needed for this year’s elections; and that it was not the Supreme Court’s role to serve as “the map-drawer for Wisconsin.”
Wisconsin’s legislative maps have for the last decade been among the most gerrymandered in the nation, a result of aggressive cartography from the Republican majority elected in 2010. In 2018, when Mr. Evers led a Democratic sweep of statewide elections, Republicans retained a 19-to-14 advantage in the State Senate and a 63-to-36 majority in the Assembly.
Mr. Evers created his own commission to draw new maps based on the 2020 census figures. The Republican majority ignored them, and in November, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that new maps must hew to a “least-change” approach from the gerrymandered 2010 maps.
The governor and the Legislature both submitted maps to the court, which selected Mr. Evers’s versions this month. Under his proposal, Republicans were highly likely to retain their legislative majorities, though they were certain to shrink by a few seats.
The Supreme Court’s order on Wednesday angered Wisconsin Democrats.
After refusing to consider Voting Rights Act claims “in other states because ‘it’s too close to the election,’ the U.S. Supreme Court today violated its own precedent and any measure of common sense,” said Sachin Chheda, an ally of Mr. Evers who is the director of the Fair Elections Project in Wisconsin. “Never has it been clearer that the U.S. Supreme Court majority will do anything it can to advance Republican interests, rather than the law, the Constitution and the will of the people.”
