Wisconsin's Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos appeared to suggest he'd push the U.S. Supreme Court to block his state justices from ruling on gerrymandered legislative districts on Monday — citing the fact that newly-elected Judge Janet Protasiewicz should not be allowed to hear the matter.
"Justice Protasiewicz should have recused herself. We think the United States Supreme Court precedent compels her recusal, and the United States Supreme Court will have the last word here," said Vos. “Justice Protasiewicz is asking to be taken at her word that she will apply the law. Given the Wisconsin Supreme Court is limiting its review of the redistricting case to two questions, legal contiguity and separation of powers, applying the law should be straightforward."
"The Wisconsin Supreme Court addressed these very questions less than two years ago, and the law remains the same,” he added.
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Wisconsin has for years had some of the most aggressively gerrymandered legislative districts in the United States, which became a flashpoint issue in the state Supreme Court election that put Protasiewicz on the bench, giving liberal-aligned justices a majority on the body for the first time in a decade.
Republicans have demanded that Protasiewicz recuse herself from redistricting cases because she remarked on the campaign trail that the legislative districts were "rigged."
Wisconsin Republicans have even gone so far as to threaten to impeach Protasiewicz before she can hear the case, which would be the first impeachment of a judge in the state since 1853. However, Vos did not elaborate on Monday about whether that was still on the table.
Under some extraordinary circumstances, the Supreme Court has curtailed state courts when their judges show clear conflicts of interest; in 2009, the Supreme Court ruled against West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin, who had voted to reverse a $50 million judgment against coal magnate Don Blankenship, after Blankenship contributed $3 million to his judicial election.
But in her decision declining to recuse herself from the redistricting case, Protasiewicz noted that the Supreme Court has explicitly rejected the idea that a judge simply expressing a political opinion disqualifies them from hearing a case on the matter. In fact, in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that barred judicial candidates from discussing disputed legal issues on the campaign trail, with former Justice Antonin Scalia writing, "[a] judge's lack of predisposition regarding the relevant legal issues has never been a necessary component of equal justice."
