The last time divided government succeeded at redistricting in Wisconsin was in 1971, when a Democratic governor and assembly came to a compromise with a Republican senate.

The map was highly successful in achieving its intended partisan result, protecting large and durable Republican majorities in the legislature regardless of swings in the state electorate.

[2] By the time of the 2020 United States census, Wisconsin had returned to divided government, with a Democratic governor clashing with the entrenched Republican legislature.

[3] But, the Wisconsin Supreme Court—whose seven members must be elected in statewide general elections—had also become increasingly politicized in the years since 2002, accelerating dramatically with the rise of big-spending Super PACs in 2010.

In his concurring opinion, Hagedorn again acknowledged that the court did not have the proper process for adjudicating all of the complexities of a redistricting case, and that they had now run out of time to attempt to deal with those issues.

[6][7] The 2022 Johnson decision had a predictable effect on the 2022 elections, Republicans increased their already-substantial legislative majorities even as Democratic governor Tony Evers won re-election.

During the campaign, Protasiewicz had expressed interest in revisiting the redistricting decision[8][9] and after her victory, Progressive legal advocates vowed to bring a new challenge to the 2022 maps.

Ultimately the new liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to take the case, but they declined to evaluate issue 1, whether the maps represented an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

[1] The opinion then examined historical precedent from earlier Wisconsin Supreme Court cases, including State ex rel.

Writing for the majority, Karofsky wrote that "least changes" was never properly defined in Johnson, and proved unworkable in practice, as it was abandoned by its own authors.

Finally, the court acknowledged that they would consider partisan impact in the map-making process, and would attempt to avoid selecting any map which privileged one political party over another.

Much of her dissent, however, was spent on attacking the motivations of individual justices, airing personal grievances, and complaining about the manner in which the court had been run since the start of the new term in August 2023.

Bradley also specifically criticized the majority's acknowledgement that their remedial map process would seek partisan fairness, arguing that this was beyond the court's authority.

[1] A third dissent was written by Justice Brian Hagedorn, who touched on several of the same issues but without the personal or ad hominem invective of Bradley or Ziegler.

Importantly, he concluded his dissent by recounting several of the same points he made in his concurring opinion in 2022's Johnson case, explaining that the Wisconsin Supreme Court still lacked a proper procedure for handling redistricting.

He pointed out how the deficient process in Johnson had led to a reversal by the United States Supreme Court, and predicted that a similar result could occur again with Clarke.

[1] Even so, Justice Hagedorn stated that "the claim here that the constitution's original meaning requires the territory in all legislative districts to be physically contiguous is probably correct.

"[13] Former president Barack Obama also hailed the enactment of new maps that resulted from this judgement, saying via twitter: "Wisconsin made history this week!

"[14] The Court's opinion suggested that the best case scenario for a remedial plan would be for the legislature and governor to agree and pass a map which complied with the constitutional requirements.