MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Attorneys for the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to uphold GOP-drawn legislative boundaries, saying a ruling that found them to be unconstitutional was “dangerously” wrong.

The filing comes in support of separate and similar arguments made by Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel in his appeal of a three-judge panel’s ruling last year striking down the maps. The judges ordered new maps to be drawn by November, saying the current ones amounted to unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering favoring Republicans. It was the first ruling of its kind after decades of legal battles over redistricting.

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The Legislature argued in its Monday filing that the ruling was “profoundly out of step” with decades of lower court decisions rejecting comparable claims of gerrymandering — the practice of drawing boundaries to favor one political party over another. If the ruling is allowed to stand, the Legislature argued, it “would extinguish any last hope for state autonomy in the redistricting process” and make federal lawsuits unavoidable.

Both the Legislature and Schimel are asking the Supreme Court to overturn the earlier decision and allow the current boundaries to remain in effect.

States are required to draw maps for district boundaries every 10 years following a census. Republicans took control of both the Wisconsin state Senate and Assembly in the 2010 election. The maps they drew in 2011 have helped the GOP maintain control of state government in every election since then. Republicans have their largest majority in the state Senate since 1971 and their biggest in the Assembly since 1957.

The maps are being challenged by a group of Democratic voters. They contend that Republicans unconstitutionally consolidated GOP power and discriminated against Democrats. The three-judge panel agreed.

The Legislature argues in its brief that if the ruling is allowed to stand, it will be “all but impossible” to draw maps “without running afoul of one prohibition or another.” The ruling is “dangerously” wrong because “it imposes on legislatures a constitutional requirement so amorphous as to threaten their ability to carry out their constitutionally assigned task of drawing districts.”

“It is already hard enough to draw districts that simultaneously satisfy the competing demands of the myriad state and federal constraints on the districting process,” the Legislature argued.

Democrats who brought the lawsuit said the Legislature’s argument misses the point.

“The voters of Wisconsin have been disenfranchised by the use of unconstitutional and unfair maps,” said Sachin Chheda, director of the Fair Elections Project, which organized the lawsuit. “The people care about having a truly representative democracy, not helping legislators draw their own districts to assure themselves power. It’s too bad the speaker and majority leader are using taxpayers’ money to fund this attack on the people of our state.”

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Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald hired a pair of law firms to represent them and file a series of briefs before the Supreme Court. Taxpayers could have to pay $175,000 in legal fees to a Washington-based attorney with the law firm Kirkland and Ellis, while the Madison-based law firm of Bell Giftos St. John will be paid $300 an hour. Taxpayers have already spent $2 million for the Republican defense of the maps.

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Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sbauerAP and find more of his work at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/scott-bauer.