Morry Gash/AP Photo
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who is being targeted for possible impeachment by Republican lawmakers, attends her first hearing as a justice, September 7, 2023, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Donald Trump couldn’t persuade Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election, but when it comes to discarding the clear decisions of voters, Wisconsin’s Republican state legislators are made of sterner stuff.
As The New York Times has reported, they appear to be dead set on impeaching newly elected state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, not for anything she’s done in office—she hasn’t really done anything yet—but because she will shift the balance on the court from a MAGA-conservative majority to a liberal one.
Protasiewicz was elected to the court this spring by a surprisingly decisive 11-percentage-point majority. In a state as closely divided between R’s and D’s as any, the scope of her majority was remarkable, as she clearly managed to corral a large number of Republican votes. That was chiefly because she made clear that she supported a woman’s right to choose, which the Dobbs decision had negated in Wisconsin by reactivating the state law banning abortions, which was enacted in 1849. Once Protasiewicz was elected, that meant that the court would surely overturn that law by a 4-3 vote.
Protasiewicz also made clear that she didn’t think the legislature’s gerrymandering could survive judicial scrutiny. The world-class gerrymandering that its Republican members devised to give themselves control of nearly three-fourths of the state’s districts, even though their party was losing most statewide elections, ran roughshod over such niceties as majority rule and equal justice under the law.
In response to which, Republican legislators appear poised to go where Pence feared to tread, and impeach and remove Protasiewicz from the bench lest her legal scruples threaten their sinecures. They charge that because she voiced her beliefs before she was elected, she should not be permitted to weigh in on any cases that deal with topics on which she’d expressed opinions. As the Times article points out, her Republican colleagues on the court have done that repeatedly; one of them has compared homosexuality to bestiality and declared Christianity to be the only true religion.
More broadly, judges are appointed or elected primarily because of their beliefs and secondarily because of their legal competence. Wisconsin voters decisively elected Protasiewicz because of her support for a woman’s right to choose.
Which is why Wisconsin Republicans aren’t really addressing what is their root problem: the Wisconsin electorate. If they’re serious about impeaching Protasiewicz—and they are—they also need, at minimum, to formally censure state voters. Completely negating the electorate’s power is a big deal, but it’s only de facto. A proper de jure response should also be required. How about suspending future elections? Extending their terms in office by, say, 60 years? (Well, I guess the current gerrymandering has effectively already done that.)
Protasiewicz is just a symptom. The voters are the root cause, and will remain so as long as the state persists in holding elections. Clearly, either elections or the voters themselves will have to go.
Maybe, like migrants, they can be bused to Chicago.
Speaking of narrow majorities, the Senate yesterday confirmed Biden nominee Gwynne Wilcox to a five-year term on the National Labor Relations Board.
Wilcox, whose two-year term to fill a Board vacancy just expired, had had her confirmation vote held up by Senate Republicans’ decision not to submit a nominee of their own to the Board. (Customarily, presidential and opposition-party nominees to the NLRB are submitted together to the Senate, and Republicans had hoped that Senate Democrats would keep deferring to that custom. If they had, that would have taken Board membership down to just three members, which would have constrained the Board from making some significant rulings.)
Senate Democrats did defer to that custom for many months, but as I reported on Monday, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer concluded he’d bring Wilcox’s confirmation up for a vote this week. She was confirmed by a 51-48 vote, with the two Republican senators from Alaska (Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan) joining Senate Democrats—including Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema—in voting yes. The one Democrat voting no was, you guessed it, Joe Manchin, who made clear that his allegiance to coal doesn’t extend to miners.
