The fact that the election maps in Wisconsin are severely gerrymandered to heavily favor Republicans has been well known for over a decade. Even though Democrats earned 53% of the vote for Assembly races in 2018, they won only 36% of the districts. Then, when you thought it couldn't get worse, it did:

The current maps were instituted by the Supreme Court in 2022, which was then under a 4-3 conservative majority, after the Republican-held Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers were unable to reach a compromise on new maps. The conservative majority ruled in a series of decisions in Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission that any proposed new maps must comply with a standard of “least change” from the gerrymandered 2011 maps. After the legal wrangling ended, the Court chose the exact maps that had been initially proposed by the Legislature, which closely followed the lines of the previous gerrymandered maps, although they had been vetoed by the governor.

After that debacle, the Republicans managed to achieve supermajorities in both houses despite not winning the majority of votes cast.

On Tuesday, over the howls and protests of the conservatives - both on and off the court- the state supreme court heard three hours of arguments regarding the districting maps. There are two questions at hand in this case. The first question is whether the supreme court violated the separation of powers when they chose the map despite the governor's veto. Secondly, whether the districts approved meets the federal requirement of districts being contiguous. ProPublica recently issued a report that included diagrams of just how mucked up the districts maps are, including a district that consists of dozens of little islands and a single house included in one district even though it's surrounded by another district.

The plaintiffs are asking for relief by the court ordering the entire maps be redrawn in a fair fashion and that the state senate have every seat up for election by 2024.

The conservatives went into panic mode as they saw their rule by minority about to be dashed.

Conservative justices, most notably Rebecca Bradley, went on the attack even before lawyers for the plaintiffs got through their opening statements:

"Everybody knows that the reason we're here is because there was a change in the membership of the court," said conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, who interrupted Campaign Legal Center attorney Mark Gaber within seconds of his remarks to the court.

They also couldn't resist setting up soft balls for the lawyers of the defense, including some who helped them gain their seats in the first place. Hypocritcally, they still clamored that Justice Janet Protasiewicz should have been the one who recused themselves.

Besides focusing on the timing of the case, the conservatives also were focused on the fact that they had just decided the case two years ago. They know that what they did was shady and unconstitutional and now it's being brought to the light of the day.

Bradley said that she couldn't think of anything "less democratic" than unseating elected officials who were duly elected, all the while ignoring the fact that if the maps are illegal, the office holders could not have possibly been duly elected.

In summary, the hearing was basically three hours of the lawyers of the plaintiffs laying out their cogent points and the lawyers for the defense as well as the conservative Justices snarling and flailing as they saw their rule of the minority crumble into dust. It couldn't happen to more deserving people.