Lower Court Holding in Whitford v. Gill
Decision of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin
The plaintiffs’ claim is that Act 43 violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights because it discriminates against Democratic voters by diminishing the strength of their votes in comparison to their Republican counterparts. In resolving the Plaintiffs’ claim, we face a significant analytical problem. Although the Supreme Court’s political gerrymandering cases establish that “an excessive injection of politics is unlawful,” Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004), the Court has not come to rest on a single, judicially manageable or discernible test for determining when the line between “acceptable” and “excessive” has been crossed. Indeed, a signature feature of these cases is that…
