State Republican legislative leaders are making a last-ditch effort to overturn new state House and Senate maps passed by majority Democrats.

Facing another decade in the minority, Illinois Republicans have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the new state House and Senate maps that majority Democrats passed and Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law.

The lawsuit alleges that Democratic Party leaders gerrymandered the maps to ensure that they would maintain substantial majorities in both bodies, and that is indisputably true. But it's also, unfortunately, part and parcel of the highly politicized redistricting process in Illinois. The current gerrymandered maps survived legal scrutiny, so why wouldn't the new gerrymandered maps be approved as well?

Despite statements expressing confidence in the validity of their lawsuit, it's hard to imagine that Republican House Leader Tom Cross or Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno really think they will win.

Being political realists, they almost certainly must view this as a last, desperate effort to avoid the political oblivion the Democratic maps will almost certainly visit upon them in November 2012.

To support their claims that the maps are discriminatory and therefore illegal, the lawsuit alleges that the maps violate the political rights of blacks and Hispanics by denying them the opportunity to win the maximum number of legislative seats they could win. It alleges Republicans are victims of Democratic efforts to place them in a permanent political minority.

At the same time, however, the lawsuit alleges that Democrats drew a district combining black sections of Springfield with black sections of Decatur in an effort to defeat freshman Republican state Rep. Adam Brown of Decatur. (Brown already has announced he won't run for re-election in that district, instead choosing another district that includes part of Champaign County.) The GOP charges that the bizarre shape and tremendous size of that district violates requirements that districts be compact and contiguous.

The lawsuit will be heard by a three-judge panel in the Northern District of Illinois. Republicans are asking the current map be set aside and a new map be drawn.

The new legislative maps were released publicly and then passed by Democrats during a 10-day period — May 18 to May 27 — as the spring legislative session was wrapping up. Gov. Quinn quickly signed the redistricting bill into law.

There is no question Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton went out of their way to punish the GOP in the map-drawing process. The map lumps 25 incumbent Republicans against one another, while just eight Democrats fall into the same category. The lawsuit alleges the new maps split "46 counties, 214 townships and 336 municipalities" to provide Democrats the maximum political advantage.

But federal judges have, for the most part, thrown up their hands in despair in trying to regulate the political machinations that go into the redistricting process, which takes place every 10 years after a new census is completed.

This process is not good for the public because it often denies voters a real choice at the polls. But in Illinois and many other states, the process is controlled by the politicians, and they do what's good for them. Absent extreme cases, the federal courts have generally let them have their way, and there's no good reason to think the result will be different this time.