Oh yea, cleta. Why the fuck she still has a job in this administration is beyond me. At least I think she still is there in some capacity. Or she works for the rnc or something.
Wisconsin anti-union, anti-collective bargaining legislation up for grabs.
"NEVER FORGET -- Remember also Trump's ongoing anti-democratic plan was always to replace non-Trump people with 'election was stolen' Trump loyalists in electoral offices nationwide." [...]Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election. They have noted the points of failure and have taken concrete steps to avoid failure next time. Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject. They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters.
udge Janet Protasiewicz answers a question during a debate with opponent Justice Dan Kelly on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, at the State Bar Center in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Act 10 lawsuit renews focus on Protasiewicz
As a candidate, the court's newest justice said she thought the landmark collective bargaining law was unconstitutional
By Robert D'Andrea Published: Tuesday, December 5, 2023, 8:40am
The latest legal challenge to one of the state's highest-profile laws is putting a renewed focus on the Wisconsin Supreme Court's newest justice and comments she made as a candidate earlier this year.
Several unions filed a lawsuit last week challenging the constitutionality of Act 10, the signature policy of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The law ended collective bargaining for most public employees in Wisconsin.
Act 10 ended collective bargaining for most public unions by allowing them to bargain solely over base wage increases no greater than inflation. It also disallowed the automatic withdrawal of union dues and required annual recertification votes for unions.
During her campaign, Protasiewicz said she disagreed with the court's prior decision.
"I agree with the dissent in that case, where the authors said Act 10 is unconstitutional," she said at an event in Madison.
Protasiewicz later told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she might consider recusing herself from the case because she marched against the plan when it was in the Legislature and signed the petition to recall Walker over the law.
Decision to recuse rests with Protasiewicz but may hinge on how other justices would vote
Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Protasiewicz may view her participation in this case differently from another about the state's legislative maps.
Protasiewicz called the maps "rigged" during the campaign, but has rejected GOP calls to recuse herself from redistricting cases.
[ Insert: They are rigged, that's how the GOP wants it .. [...]Fifty-five of the state’s 99 Assembly districts and 21 of 33 in the Senate contain “disconnected pieces of territory,” according to the most recent petition filed with the state Supreme Court by 19 Wisconsin voters. The suit seeks to have the state’s maps declared unfair and redrawn. [...] https://www.propublica.org/article/wisconsin-legislative-maps-bizarre-are-they-illegal ]
The court has many different options for whether or how they would draw new legislative maps, Schweber said. But a challenge to Act 10 is much more black and white.
"I think she's concerned about the fact that she's much more exposed in terms of having taken a specific position on a legal question as an issue in this case," he said. "After all, there aren't lots of different ways of working this one out."
The decision to recuse may come down to whether Protasiewicz would determine the result, Schweber said. If she's concerned about appearances, he said she might remain on the case and vote against the challenge.
Schweber said the hardest decision for Protasiewicz would be if she wanted the law overturned, but the court would be deadlocked if she were to recuse. A three-three split among the remaining justices would mean the law would survive.
"I think certainly if I were her, I'd wanna try and take the temperature of my fellow justices and see if my presence or absence was likely to make a difference in the outcome at all," he said.
Walker, others weigh in
Walker, who rose to national prominence following his introduction of the collective bargaining plan, defended Act 10 in recent media appearances. He said Protasiewicz should recuse herself from the case.
"Her putting politics ahead of her judicial responsibility, I think, is a big, big concern," Walker told Madison television station WKOW. "I don't think we have any luck with her. I do think someone like (Justice) Ann Walsh Bradley who's been on the court nearly a quarter of a century will look at past precedent."
Bradley, another of the court's liberal justices, wrote the dissent to the Act 10 decision in 2014, where she argued law is unconstitutional. Bradley is up for re-election in 2025 in a race that could again decide the court's ideological balance.
Patrick Guarasci, who ran Protasiewicz's campaign, told WISN-TV that the court may not decide all of its high-profile cases before that 2025 election.
"Some of that stuff has to work its way through lower courts. I think this court is not trying to legislate from the bench," he said. "We haven't seen what will happen on the maps case. We haven't seen what will happen on abortion when it gets to the court."
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