Liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court majority sidelines chief justice, imposes new filing deadlines

The changes will make the court “more inclusive, timely, and responsive” and be a “first step in making our court more accessible and more accountable to the people of Wisconsin,” liberal Justice Rebecca Dallet said.

The moves drew immediate ire from conservatives, especially the chief justice, whose powers now appear to be largely diminished.

In a letter Friday, Chief Justice Annette Ziegler accused “four rogue members of the court” of gutting her power and altering the court’s operating procedures in a “secret, unscheduled, illegitimate closed meeting.”

Separately, conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley tweeted that liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley and “her cabal of extreme leftists,” justices Dallet, Jill Karofsky and the newly sworn-in Janet Protasiewicz, were the justices who approved the changes.

Ziegler said the four members are wrongfully conducting court operations outside the regularly scheduled business year from September to June.

“The rogue justices’ attempt to go outside of this recognized procedure is an imposition of will and a raw exercise of overreaching power,” she said in the letter. “Any such attempted action is illegitimate and unenforceable.”

In response, Dallet said she had made the chief justice aware of the pending changes and was disappointed that she declined to participate in a meeting to discuss them.

“On behalf of a majority of justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, I want to express my disappointment that the Chief Justice, rather than collegially participate in a scheduled meeting of the court today, is litigating issues normally discussed by Justices either in conference or through email, through media releases,” Dallet said.

“It is not my intention, nor the intention of a majority of my colleagues, to continue to litigate internal issues through the media,” she continued.

The latest actions cap off a tumultuous first week of the court’s liberal majority that began with the firing of the state court system director, a former Jefferson County judge who ran unsuccessfully for the Supreme Court as a conservative in 2009. It followed with the liberals appointing their own administrative director, which led to GOP accusations that their appointment was unconstitutional.

Powers diminished

Along with her statement, Dallet attached more than 40 pages of changes to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s operating procedures and rules.

Perhaps most notably, administrative decisions that used to be made solely by the chief justice would now be made by the chief justice along with two justices chosen by a majority of the court. Given the newfound liberal majority, that rule would likely lead to two liberal justices outnumbering Ziegler on the new “Supreme Court Administrative Committee.”

Another change advanced Friday would impose deadlines for issuing concurrences or dissents on orders deciding whether to allow lawsuits to be filed directly with the Wisconsin Supreme Court, instead of a lower court.

Any concurrences or dissents from such an order “shall be circulated within 7 business days of the circulation of the order granting or denying a petition to commence an original action,” the new operating procedure states. Any late dissent or concurrence would have to be released separately under the new rule.

That change would likely hurry the process of a lawsuit that liberals filed Wednesday directly with the state high court that seeks to redraw the state’s legislative maps. The new rule would appear to prevent any justice from delaying a decision on whether to allow the lawsuit to proceed.

Open meetings

Other changes announced Friday include a provision to hold the court’s administrative meetings in public.

The court used to have open meetings to consider rules and operating procedures, but in 2012 justices rolled back their open meetings policy and did so again five years later, drawing ire from the liberal bloc on the court.

In the previously public meetings, Wisconsin high court justices would discuss and vote on changing judicial policies across the state court system, including when they should recuse themselves from Supreme Court cases, rules regarding evidence and coming up with new ways to encourage lawyers to provide free legal services.

That policy allowed the public to tune in, for example, to the justices considering whether concealed weapons should be allowed in the court and whether they should recuse themselves from cases in which the litigants have donated to their campaigns.

For the past several years those meetings have been held behind closed doors. During her campaign Protasiewicz said she supported opening the court meetings again.

The court will be announcing a bipartisan task force to study the issue of recusal and present recommendations, Dallet said Friday.

In the past, justices and judicial candidates have varied significantly on when they feel recusing themselves from cases is appropriate.

Protasiewicz has said she would recuse herself from cases involving the Democratic Party of Wisconsin since it donated millions to her campaign. She said she wouldn’t recuse herself from cases involving abortion or redistricting despite making clear her support for reinstating abortion rights and redrawing the state’s legislative maps.