Wisconsin. 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 on. Hi, Zach. Hello, Fred.
With liberal justices in the majority, how fast tracked and
foregone are these abortion cases expected to be?
>> 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. >> So how soon could a decision
in these cases come? >> Well, we've got a briefing
schedule right now, 40 days and 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
even around the election, depending on where this lands.
This could come right before November.
>> Reading the writings in this order. The vitriol in this court
persists. >> Absolutely. The dissents are
acting as press releases for both sides of 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
favor of these decisions. >> So but but before decisions
in these cases, there are decisions and two other big
cases, one involving the legality of absentee ballot drop
boxes. 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 to drop
box, and how to vote. This fall. >> And then there was the case
over separation of powers, where legislative committee vetoes
shut down the governor's stewardship, land purchases.
>> 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
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. >> So is that the reason that
they could kind of just choose stewardship specifically because
potentially the implications are much broader.
>> Well, it this 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 is. And we may not know until