In a hotly contested election, Wisconsin voters transferred control of the state Supreme Court from Republicans to Democrats. The election of Janet Protasiewicz gave the liberal wing of the officially nonpartisan court a 4-3 majority. Protasiewicz won by a significant margin in a contest widely believed to be about the future of abortion rights and the state’s legislative breakdown.
Over the summer, Wisconsin Republicans began talking about removing the newly elected judge before she could hear a case involving current legislative plans. Republicans are demanding that the judge recuse herself from the apportionment case, given her campaign statements on the existing maps and her receipt of large campaign donations from the Democratic Party. Failure to recant would constitute the impeachable offense in the state proceeding.
Republicans have a large majority in the General Assembly (the House of Representatives) and just enough members in the Senate to convict, if the Republican senators all stay together. The more interesting possibility is that the Assembly could impeach the justice and the Senate could postpone a trial — or not hold a trial at all. When Nancy Pelosi delayed the impeachment of President Donald Trump, there were no legal consequences. Not so in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, as in many states, an impeached judge is immediately suspended from exercising the powers of his office until the conclusion of an impeachment trial. Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly could prevent Protasiewicz from deciding matters without ever testing whether Republicans can hold out through a Senate process and without forcing Senate Republicans to cast what will likely be a politically difficult vote.
An impeachment purely for the sake of it would be an extreme case of constitutional hardball, and if Republicans in Wisconsin can get away with it, partisans in other states will likely seriously consider trying it themselves.
A Democratic attorney has filed a lawsuit in state court seeking an injunction against a potential impeachment.
Meanwhile, Parliament Speaker Robin Vos appears to be trying to slow down the impeachment train. He announced that he will appoint a panel of three former Supreme Court justices to write a report on the scope of the legislature’s impeachment power. An extraordinary move that, if nothing else, postpones a decision on the impeachment issue “for the next few weeks.”
Extraordinary developments that need to be closely monitored.