MADISON, Wis. (Legal Newsline) - Wisconsin's liberal-led Supreme Court has bookended this term with politically motivated decisions, according to conservatives on the court who just had a ruling they made two years ago overturned.
Janet Protasiewicz won 2022's general election over Dan Kelly in a battle that brought in millions of dollars from out-of-state liberals in support of Protasiewicz. Justices aren't given political party designations in Wisconsin, but Kelly clearly had the support of conservatives.
Redistricting and abortion were issues on the horizon as the sides fought for their own 4-3 majority. In the end, it was the liberal justices who outnumbered conservatives.
The contention spilled over onto the bench, with a conservative minority in one case calling the majority opinion "tyranny," while the conservative chief justice Annette Ziegler accused the liberals of a power grab.
The drama continued this month. Democrats, in a 4-3 ruling, said the law allows absentee voters to put their votes in ballot drop boxes, rather than return them in the mail or in person to their county clerk's office.
The overwhelmingly Republican Legislature said existing law affirmed in 2022 in a case known as Teigen forbid drop boxes, and a trial judge agreed. But Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, intervened and urged the court to overrule Teigen, which it did.
“In a setback for both the separation of powers and public trust in our elections, the left-wing justices on the Supreme Court of Wisconsin have obeyed the demands of their out-of-state donors at the expense of Wisconsin," said Brian Schimming, chairman of the Wisconsin GOP.
"This latest attempt by leftist justices to placate their far-left backers will not go unanswered by voters.”
Teigen was a 2022 ruling that said drop boxes should not have been used in the 2020 election. It commanded 141 pages of majority opinion, concurring opinions and a dissenting opinion from Ann Walsh Bradley, who authored this newest ruling overturning it.
This time around, it was conservative Rebecca Grassl Bradley's time to file a dissenting opinion.
"The majority again forsakes the rule of law in an attempt to advance its political agenda," Rebecca Grassl Bradley wrote.
"The majority began this term by tossing the legislative maps adopted by this court... for the sole purpose of facilitating 'the redistribution of political power in the Wisconsin legislature.'
"The majority ends the term by loosening the legislature's regulations governing the privilege of absentee voting in the hopes of tipping the scales in future elections."
Rebecca Grassl Bradley wrote the case is not about whether drop boxes help one side or the other in any election. Instead, it became about rewriting directions from the legislature, she said.
Wisconsin law barred the use offsite, unmanned drop boxes, she wrote.
"Although the majority attempts to package its disagreements with Teigen as legal, the truth is obvious: The majority disagrees with the decision as a matter of policy and politics, not law," she wrote.
"The members of the majority believe using drop boxes is good policy, and one they hope will aid their preferred political party."