MADISON – A second three-judge panel on Tuesday dismissed a challenge to Wisconsin’s congressional maps, ruling it has no authority to act on the claims without further input from the state Supreme Court.

“Until the [state] Supreme Court says otherwise,” the lawsuit’s claims are “non-justiciable and non-cognizable under Wisconsin law,” the judges wrote.

The law firm that brought the suit said it would immediately appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court.

The decision is one of two cases that have been under consideration by separate panels composed of three judges from different counties appointed by the liberal-led state Supreme Court. The lawsuits, filed in July 2025, followed multiple failed attempts to redraw the maps, which are currently represented by six Republicans and two Democrats.

This case, brought by Law Forward representing the group Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy, contends the current maps amount to an anti-competitive gerrymander.

Republican members of the state’s congressional delegation and others sought to dismiss it.

“The three-judge panel got it right,” said Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty deputy counsel Lucas Vebber, an intervenor in the case. “This is a victory for the rule of law in our state.”

The state’s high court issued orders Nov. 25 concluding the two legal challenges constituted “an action to challenge the apportionment of any congressional or state legislative district” under a 2011 state law that requires such challenges to be heard by a panel appointed by the Supreme Court.

It was the first time the 2011 law had been invoked in a redistricting case.

The three-judge panel, led by Dane County Circuit Judge David Conway, wrote in its April 28 order that while plaintiffs presented a “detailed theory to support their claims,” the state Supreme Court already held in 2022 that the “partisan composition of electoral districts raises a non-justiciable political question.”

The panel, “as an inferior court, is obligated to obey them,” the judges wrote.

“The Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of our state constitution. When the Court speaks, its words are final unless and until it says otherwise. Because this panel is bound by the Court’s interpretations, it must alternatively dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims for failure to state a cognizable constitutional cause of action,” the panel wrote.

A separate three-judge panel last month rejected a parallel case on similar grounds.

“This is the first anti-competitive gerrymandering case ever filed in Wisconsin courts, and it deserves to be heard,” Law Forward director of litigation Doug Poland said in a statement. “

Under the 2011 law that required these challenges to be heard by panels of circuit court judges, the order may only be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

“We will therefore appeal the case to our state supreme court and look forward to the opportunity to prove that the state’s congressional maps must be redrawn to ensure that Wisconsin voters are given a real choice in voting for congressional district candidates and that the legislature does not dictate which political party’s candidate will prevail by skewing the composition of districts to protect incumbents and political parties,” Poland said.