Speaker Ross says moving to impeach justice
protest say which is not off the table. Here to talk more about this senior
political report, Zach Schultz at the Capitol and hi Zach. Hey Fred. So now
Voss 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. Well at this point there really
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 Protasey what's 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
Hagadorn sided with Governor Evers and chose a Democratic maps until the U.S.
Supreme Court said no. So how surprising was it that former Justice Prosser and
another conservative former Justice told Voss that there should be no effort to
impeach Protasey withs. Well these are conservatives from the Supreme Court but
there's 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 and all these comments all
these actions came on the campaign trail before Janet Protasey withs was
Justice Protasey which so in that sense it's pretty clear that that's how it
should have been read if you're acidic you would argue well you know you could
always assume you can 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 Voss 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 his caucus along. There was
also the argument that Protasey which 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? Well in terms of
impeachment that's unclear it 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 and her decision not to recuse from these cases
and 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 have received large
amounts of proportional amounts of campaign finance funding from conservative
or liberal interest groups and saying that they've all been influenced by this
but no one else has recused so she shouldn't have to either. So what was
Justice Protasey what's referring to when she said prior writings of other
justices might indicate firm preconceptions on the redistricting issue.
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 what 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. Back to this issue of recusal with just about a half a minute
left what happens if Janet Protasey was compelled
in the end by the high court to recuse? Well if she's not on it then there's
only six justices left there's split three three
Justice Hagadorn 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. All right Zach Schultz thanks a lot.
Thank you Fred.
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