There isn’t currently a legal challenge pending against Wisconsin’s congressional map, but many people expect that the Badger State will have to redraw its lines sometime in the next few years. Why? Because with the election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz in 2023, control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped from conservatives to liberals, making the court much more receptive to claims of partisan gerrymandering.

During her 2023 campaign, Protasiewicz called Wisconsin’s electoral maps “rigged,” and if the Wisconsin Supreme Court were to hear a challenge to the congressional map, she would likely join the court’s three other liberal justices in striking it down. Wisconsin’s congressional delegation currently consists of six Republicans and two Democrats, despite Biden winning the state 49.4 percent to 48.8 percent in 2020. A fairer map would likely result in Democrats picking up at least one seat.

Republicans in the legislature are already mobilizing against such an outcome. They have demanded that Protasiewicz recuse herself from any lawsuits over the map, threatening her with impeachment if she does not. Republicans have also proposed a compromise where an advisory redistricting commission would draw a new map, but the Republican-controlled legislature would still retain the final power to pass (or not pass) it.

Ohio’s 2024 map is set, and it will be the same congressional district map as 2022. But the path Ohio took to this outcome was anything but straightforward. In November 2021, the Republican-controlled state government enacted a map where the GOP might have won as many as 13 of the state’s 15 districts. But in January 2022, the Ohio Supreme Court struck down the map as a partisan gerrymander, placing the map in the hands of the Ohio Redistricting Commission. With a 5-2 edge on the board, Republicans passed a second map in March 2022 that still gave the GOP a good chance of capturing at least 10 districts, if not more. Although the state’s high court ruled that this map was also unconstitutional in July 2022, by then the timeline for the case left the second map in place for the 2022 elections, in which Republicans won 10 of the state’s House seats.

The same map will now be used in 2024, too, after the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed legal challenges to the map in September. The plaintiffs who opposed the map had themselves sought a dismissal because they were less likely to have success before the state’s high court after the 2022 midterms, when Republicans captured a firmer majority with the retirement of Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who’d ruled against the state’s maps. If the mapmaking process had reopened for 2024, Republicans may have drawn lines even more favorable to the GOP. Under Ohio law, a map passed without bipartisan support can only remain in effect for two election cycles instead of a full decade, so because no Democrats supported the map currently in use, it will remain in effect through the 2024 election and then need to be redrawn before the 2026 election.

Before then, however, the state’s redistricting process could change due to a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment that proponents aim to put on the November 2024 ballot. The proposal would implement a 15-member commission made up of Republicans, Democrats and independents, with bans against the participation of recent officeholders, lobbyists or party officials. The amendment also includes measures against partisan gerrymandering.