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Meeting Date:
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6/28/2018 - 6:30 PM
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Category:
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Reports and Communications from the Board Clerk/Chief Officer, Office of Board Governance
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Type:
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Info
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Subject:
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1. Monthly Report, with Possible Action, on Legislative Activities Affecting MPS
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Strategic Plan Compatibility Statement:
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Goal 1 Academic Achievement Goal 2 Student, Family and Community Engagement Goal 3 Effective and Efficient Operations
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Attachments
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File Attachment:
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Background:
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The case of Gil v. Whitford, the Wisconsin redistricting case concerning partisan gerrymandering, was dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court and sent back to a lower court for review. The cased was dismissed with the ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing for the remedy that they were seeking and that the arguments offered focused on the impact of political parties rather than the violation of individual rights. The fact that the case was sent back to a lower court rather than dismissed out of hand is significant in that it means that the guidance offered in the opinions of the High Court will be reviewed and litigation will continue.
A summary of the case as offered in the ruling is provided below:
"Members of the Wisconsin Legislature are elected from single-member legislative districts. Under the Wisconsin Constitution, the legislature must redraw the boundaries of those districts following each census. After the 2010 census, the legislature passed a new districting plan known as Act 43. Twelve Democratic voters, the plaintiffs inthis case, alleged that Act 43 harms the Democratic Party’s ability toconvert Democratic votes into Democratic seats in the legislature. They asserted that Act 43 does this by “cracking” certain Democraticvoters among different districts in which those voters fail to achieve electoral majorities and “packing” other Democratic voters in a fewdistricts in which Democratic candidates win by large margins. The plaintiffs argued that the degree to which packing and cracking hasfavored one political party over another can be measured by an “efficiency gap” that compares each party’s respective “wasted” votes— i.e., votes cast for a losing candidate or for a winning candidate in excess of what that candidate needs to win—across all legislative districts. The plaintiffs claimed that the statewide enforcement of Act43 generated an excess of wasted Democratic votes, thereby violatingthe plaintiffs’ First Amendment right of association and their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection. The defendants, several members of the state election commission, moved to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims. They argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing tochallenge the constitutionality of Act 43 as a whole because, as individual voters, their legally protected interests extend only to the makeup of the legislative district in which they vote. The three-judge District Court denied the defendants’ motion and, following a trial, concluded that Act 43 was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.Regarding standing, the court held that the plaintiffs had suffered a particularized injury to their equal protection rights."
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Fiscal Impact Statement:
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None
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Implementation and Assessment Plan
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Recommendation:
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Approvals:
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Recommended By:
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Signed By:
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Chris Thiel - Legislative Policy Specialist
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Signed By:
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Jacqueline M. Mann, Ph.D. - Board Clerk/Chief Officer
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