Two consultants hired by the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Thursday that Republican-drawn legislative maps were “partisan gerrymanders” that shouldn’t be considered but stopped short of throwing out the four maps drawn up by Democratic lawmakers.  

Consultants Jonathan Cervas, a professor from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Bernard Grofman, a political science professor from the University of California, Irvine, submitted a report to the state’s high court Thursday evening claiming that maps drawn by Republican legislature and conservative organization Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, were gerrymandered. The Supreme Court ruled in December that the Republican-drawn maps were unconstitutional because they did not meet new contiguity requirements.

“Of the remaining plans, the [WILL plan] appears to have a substantial number of fails of the ‘bounded by’ constitutional criteria,” Cervas and Grofman wrote in the report. “We also note that both the Legislature’s plan and the [WILL plan], from a social science perspective, are partisan gerrymanders.”

“That kind of insulation from the forces of electoral change is the hallmark of a gerrymander,” they continued in their report. “To put it simply, geography is not destiny.”

Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) vetoed new maps drawn up by GOP lawmakers that he claimed were representative of the ones Evers gave to the Supreme Court in a last-minute effort not to have the lines reordered. Evers lauded Thursday’s report, claiming that it was a significant step in the process of securing fair political maps, the Associated Press reported.

“The days of Wisconsinites living under some of the most gerrymandered maps in the country are numbered,” Evers said in a statement. “While this is just one step in this process, today is an important day for the people of Wisconsin who deserve maps that are fair, responsive, and reflect the will of the people.”

The consultants approved Evers’s maps in addition to proposals from Democratic lawmakers, petitioners who sued the original Republican-drawn maps, and professors from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WPR reported.

Republicans claimed that their proposed maps favored their majority because Democratic voters tended to gravitate toward cities while Republican supporters resided in larger areas. President of WILL Rick Esenberg condemned the Grofman and Cervas results.

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“The report hides its bias behind a fog of faux sophistication,” Esenberg said in a statement. “Let’s be clear, our maps have been rejected for one reason and one reason alone, they don’t produce the partisan outcomes the experts or many on the Court want.”

Now it will be up to the state’s Supreme Court, which has a 4-3 liberal majority, to rule on which maps to implement. The court must make a decision by March 15 following the state elections commission orders, the Associated Press reported.