Zac Schultz on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Abortion Law

Frederica Freyberg:
A flurry of Wisconsin Supreme Court opinions were released this week, and an order to hear a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin asking the court to rule that access to abortion is protected by the state constitution. The court also decided to take up the appeal to a Dane County judge’s ruling that declared Wisconsin does not have an abortion statute, only one that outlaws attacking a woman in an attempt to kill her unborn baby. Senior political reporter Zac Schultz joins us from the Capitol with more. Hi, Zac.

Zac Schultz:
Hello, Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:
With liberal justices in the majority, how fast tracked and foregone are these abortion cases expected to be?

Zac Schultz:
Well, we’ve already heard from the conservatives through their dissents to taking these cases that they fully expect the majority on this court to decide in favor of abortion rights and strike down this 1849 law, and perhaps even go as far as to enshrine the right to abortion in the Wisconsin Constitution. So I think everyone expects that to be the end result in this process. It would actually be quite surprising to conservatives and a lot of the liberals that supported Janet Protasiewicz in her run for the court just last year, if they didn’t go that route.

Frederica Freyberg:
So how soon could a decision in these cases come?

Zac Schultz:
Well, we’ve got a briefing schedule right now: 40 days then 20 days for responses. That puts us into the fall. So you can expect oral arguments to be scheduled sometime in either September or early October. That puts us on track for a decision either by — definitely before the end of the year by possibly even around the election, depending on where this lands. This could come right before November.

Frederica Freyberg:
Reading the writings in this order, the vitriol in this court persists.

Zac Schultz:
Absolutely. The dissents are acting as press releases for both sides. The concurrences and the dissents, they’re responding to each other in the footnotes. This isn’t new, but it’s become more outspoken. Justices don’t do a lot of interviews. They don’t really come on our program that often unless they’re running for reelection, as you know, Fred, and they don’t sit for a lot of interviews. But this is their way of promoting their views to their specific audiences. And we know the courts become politicized, and there are political audiences wanting to hear that opponency and those in favor of these decisions.

Frederica Freyberg:
So but, but before decisions in these cases, there are decisions in two other big cases. One involving the legality of absentee ballot drop boxes.

Zac Schultz:
That’s right. This is revisiting the Teigen case that outlawed ballot drop boxes. That came a couple of years ago. In that case, that was when the conservatives controlled the court. It was a very fractured decision. Justice Hagedorn made the deciding vote, and he only concurred with a handful of paragraphs, basically only enough to say ballot drop boxes are not specifically allowed by law and therefore are not allowed under the constitution. Now, the liberals on the court decided to retake that case under a few new angles. And it’s also, again, from the conservatives and their dissent, saying we fully expect the liberals to approve ballot drop boxes. But no matter what, there will be some certainty as this case comes out and the decision is rendered for clerks to know what to expect from August through November, so people know whether they can put their ballots in the mail or a drop box, and how to vote this fall.

Frederica Freyberg:
And then there was the case over separation of powers, where legislative committee vetoes shut down the governor’s stewardship land purchases.

Zac Schultz:
That’s right. Governor Evers sued over a number of different things that the Joint Finance Committee has held up. These were appropriations. Spending that were approved in a bill that were signed into law by the governor, fully approved. But then the funding could only be released at a later date by the Joint Finance Committee. And it was held up by Republicans in a number of different cases. Now, the governor sued, and the Supreme Court is only taking this on stewardship, which is land purchases that are designed to be for the benefit of all, for public property, for outdoor natural resources, hunting, skiing, fishing, etc. They’re going to rule on those specific cases. But it could have much broader ramifications because right now we’ve got battles going on over PFAS funding being held up under Joint Finance in the same manner. We’ve got funding for the hospitals up in northwest Wisconsin being held up. So depending on how broad that ruling is, it could impact a lot of other areas besides stewardship.

Frederica Freyberg:
So is that the reason that they could kind of just choose stewardship specifically because potentially the implications are much broader?

Zac Schultz:
Well, it just depends. Courts in the past will take a very narrow approach to some things and rule only on the one issue before them, or they’ve seen other times where they take one narrow issue and then they broaden it out and it applies to a lot of other places. And we’ll just have to see how broad this is. And we may not know until court rulings down the road.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Thanks very much. We’ll be following these, of course. Zac Schultz. Thank you.

Zac Schultz:
Thank you.