Frederica Freyberg:

Speaker Vos says moving to impeach Justice Protasiewicz is not off the table. Here to talk more about this, senior political reporter Zac Schultz at the Capitol. Hi, Zac.

Zac Schultz:

Hey, Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:

So now Vos is tying possible impeachment to how she rules on the case, that she did not recuse herself from, and saying that the U.S. Supreme Court could be the decider over all of this. As we heard from Justice Rebecca Bradley, he’s not alone in wanting this to go all the way up.

Zac Schultz:

Well, at this point, that’s the only place they can go because the Wisconsin Supreme Court is controlled by liberals who would obviously not rule in favor and would support Janet Protasiewicz in her recusal decision. So they have to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, either to overrule her decision not to recuse or to overrule any decision that would come down from the majority in the Supreme Court in Wisconsin about creating new redistricting maps. After all, it was the U.S. Supreme Court last time who kicked the original case back to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which then put in place those conservative maps that we are under. Remember the first time around, the Supreme Court with Justice Hagedorn, sided with Governor Evers and chose democratic maps until the U.S. Supreme Court said no.

Frederica Freyberg:

How surprising was it that former Justice Prosser and another conservative former justice told Vos that there should be no effort to impeach Protasiewicz?

Zac Schultz:

Well, these are conservatives from the Supreme Court, but they’re still former members of the Supreme Court. So it’s not surprising they would try and read the law in its plain language and it clearly talks about contempt in office and corrupt conduct in office. All these comments, all these actions came on the campaign trail before Janet Protasiewicz was Justice Protasiewicz. So in that sense, it’s pretty clear that that’s how it should have been read. If you were a cynic, you would argue, well, you could always assume you could find any justice somewhere to try and say what you want it to say. So I think you could also read into that that Speaker Vos simply doesn’t have the votes right now in the Assembly to impeach, if he wanted to, and that he would need support from outside places like former justices to say, yes, you should do this, in order to bring the rest of this caucus along.

Frederica Freyberg:

There was also the argument that Protasiewicz should step aside because she got campaign contributions from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin but the party isn’t a party in the case. Does that hold up in terms of impeachment?

Zac Schultz:

In terms of impeachment, that’s unclear. That was part of the campaign. That wasn’t part of her time in office, so it shouldn’t affect impeachment, but it was something that she spoke to in her recusal, in her decision not to recuse from these cases, where she said the amount of money that was contributed by a non-party to a case that wasn’t before her at the time the money was contributed should have no impact on her ability to judge this case. She pointed to numerous, other candidates, former conservatives on the Supreme Court who received large amounts, proportional amounts of campaign finance funding from conservative or liberal interest groups and saying that they’ve all about influenced by this but no one else has recused so she shouldn’t have too either.

Frederica Freyberg:

What was Justice Protasiewicz referring to when she said prior writing of other justices might indicate firm preconceptions on the redistricting issue?

Zac Schultz:

Well, remember, redistricting was just before this court in the last session and everyone wrote on this. They wrote their own dissents. They wrote the majority opinion. So everyone is on the record in terms of how they did decide this case. Now, these appeals are based on slightly different issues that they say weren’t addressed at this time. The conservatives say, well, that’s exactly why we don’t need to take this. We just decided it. This is the precedent we should be going on until 10 years from now and the liberals on the court are saying, no, this is something we can look at. It’s a new angle. Of course it helps when they have the majority so they can say that. But everyone wrote and stated where they stand on a lot of these issues so that could be the basis of preconceptions, but that’s also why the Supreme Court typically doesn’t decide the same case multiple sessions in a row once they decide it, it stands unless there’s a new angle, which is what these groups are saying is the reason why the court should take this issue up now.

Frederica Freyberg:

Back to this issue of recusal with just about a half a minute left, what happens if Janet Protasiewicz was compelled in the end by the high court to recuse?

Zac Schultz:

Well, if she’s not on it, then there’s only six justices left. They’re split 3-3. Justice Hagedorn would be a swing vote, but we saw from his dissent in the decision to take the case that he doesn’t think the court needs to revisit this issue, so more likely than not, the issue would be deadlocked and nothing would happen.

Frederica Freyberg:

Zac Schultz, thanks a lot.

Zac Schultz:

Thank you, Fred.