Republican laws to strip recently elected Democrats of power are legal, state supreme court says

Lawmaker warns decision undermines democracy in divided state

When Republican lawmakers rushed through laws to limit the power of Democrats who had been elected to some of Wisconsin’s highest posts late last year, thousands of angry residents held demonstrations. Democratic leaders objected, calling the move a blatant power grab. And lawsuits were filed.

On Friday, Wisconsin’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court said the Republicans had behaved within the law, ending, at least for the moment, a chapter that had roiled Wisconsin.

The state’s fierce partisan tug-of-war was being watched closely by political analysts, in part because the state, which Donald Trump narrowly won in 2016, is considered a critical battleground in the 2020 presidential race.

After Scott Walker, the former governor and a Republican, lost his bid for re-election last November, his colleagues in the state legislature pushed through a series of measures in a special session just before the incoming governor, Tony Evers, a Democrat, was to take office.

The laws were sweeping, and they cut deeply into the powers Democrats thought they won when they prevailed on Election Day. The Republicans limited the new governor’s ability to withdraw the state from lawsuits and his administration’s rule-making authority, and they cleared the way for lawmakers to hire outside lawyers to intervene in certain lawsuits.

As a series of lawsuits was filed objecting to the provisions, a circuit court judge had delayed their implementation. But the Supreme Court reversed that decision, saying that the Republicans had carried out a perfectly legal exercise of legislative power.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is sharply divided along ideological lines, with conservatives in the majority, and its justices frequently upheld laws signed by Mr Walker, who left office in January after voters denied him a third term. The three liberal justices on the court dissented, backing suggestions that the last-minute legislative session called by the Republicans had been unconstitutional.

“Today’s decision is disappointing and, unfortunately, all too predictable,” Mr Evers said after the ruling. “It is based on a desired political outcome, not the plain meaning and text of the Constitution.”

Scott Fitzgerald, the Republican leader in the state Senate, and Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the state Assembly, who led the efforts to push through the new laws late last year, praised the ruling in a joint statement. The Republicans lost several statewide races in 2018, but they still have majorities in both legislative chambers. That has left the lawmakers repeatedly at odds with Mr Evers.

“The court upheld a previously noncontroversial legislative practice used by both parties for decades to enact some of the most important laws in the state,” Mr Fitzgerald and Mr Vos said. “This lawsuit, pursued by special interests and Governor Evers, has led to an unnecessary waste of taxpayer resources.”

The last-minute laws, signed by Mr Walker in the days before his term ended, reinforced some of Republicans’ signature victories from the years when they had full control of state government and ensured the party would retain significant influence under a Democratic governor.

Friday’s ruling was certain to add to the partisan acrimony in the state, which surprised many people by helping put Mr Trump into office in 2016 after three decades of siding with Democratic presidential candidates.

Erin Grunze, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, which sued to block the measures, said in a statement that the ruling validated a “session that undermined the Wisconsin Constitution’s limit on its power.”

Representative Gordon Hintz, the Democratic leader in the state Assembly, said that the new laws had made Wisconsin government more toxic and done lasting damage to the legislature.

“I think it really represents a shift towards political power and control usurping any kind of consideration and respect for how a democracy is supposed to work,” Mr Hintz said.

Other legal challenges to the laws passed during the lame-duck session remain. But a liberal justice will exit the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the coming weeks, and she will be replaced by a conservative.

Wisconsin Republicans’ sprint back to the Capitol in December was the latest example of dominant parties trying to diminish the authority of their political opponents.

North Carolina Republicans took similar steps in 2016 after a Democrat was elected governor. In New Jersey last year, the Democrats who control the legislature considered essentially writing gerrymandering into their constitution.

And in Michigan, where Democrats won several statewide offices last year, legislative Republicans tried to curb their power, but the most severe measures never passed or were vetoed by the exiting Republican governor.

The New York Times