Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet C. Protasiewicz is seen during a public hearing Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
A liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who received nearly $10 million in campaign contributions from Democrats may now face impeachment for refusing to recuse herself from a districting case over maps she once slammed as “absolutely positively rigged.”
Janet Protasiewicz is a newly-elected justice on Wisconsin’s highest court, which has a 4-3 liberal majority. She took the bench in August and has yet to hear a single case. Still, Republicans threatened that if Protasiewicz did not recuse herself from presiding over a challenge to the Republican-drawn state legislative maps, she could be removed from the bench.
Former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican popular with Wisconsin conservatives, even said that the Assembly was “obligated” to impeach Protasiewicz unless she recused herself from the case.
Despite the warnings, Protasiewicz handed down a 47-page decision detailing the reasons underlying her choice to participate in the case on Friday. Protasiewicz said her ruling was based on “strict adherence to the law.”
The justice summarized the arguments made by Republicans in favor of her recusal: the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) made $9.9 million in campaign contributions to the judge and would stand to benefit if the court were to order the adoption of new maps, and Protasiewicz spoke out against the maps before she was seated on the bench.
Protasiewicz said arguments that Democrats would benefit from a ruling in the case were without merit. The DPW, as Protasiewicz pointed out in her ruling, is not a party to the lawsuit before the court and recusal on the basis of possible benefit to a non-party would be “unprecedented.” She noted that several Republican groups were major donors to other judges’ campaigns, and the connection was not a basis for their recusal in this or other cases. Further, she said, if campaign donations were to necessitate recusal, the judiciary would soon find itself at a standstill.
Indeed, Protasiewicz was vocal about two major issues during her campaign: abortion rights and Wisconsin’s gerrymandered legislative maps — which the judge called “rigged.” Shortly after she took the bench in August, a number of groups filed a legal challenge to Wisconsin’s districting maps. In response came Republican calls for recusal.
Protasiewicz also noted that it was the Republican-led legislature that enacted a 2015 law that permitted political parties to make unlimited donations to judges’ campaigns; this very law allowed the DPW to make its $9.9 million donation to Protasiewicz’s campaign in 2023.
Turning to the argument that her past comments about the state’s voting maps disqualified her from presiding over the lawsuit, Protasiewicz was frank about her comments from the campaign trail.
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The judge said her past statements indicated that she would “enjoy taking a fresh look at Wisconsin’s legislative maps,” but said at the time, no case had been pending and no specific claim or party was related to her statement.
Protasiewicz also quoted her own past statements that she said “expressed [her] fundamental commitments as a judge.”
“I will set aside my opinions and decide cases based on the law,” she summarized. “There will surely be many cases in which I reach results that I personally dislike. That is what it means to be a judge.”
Protasiewicz also referenced the words of the stalwart conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia which addressed precisely the argument made by Republicans in favor of her recusal.
“Writing for the Court, Justice Scalia made clear that ‘[a] judge’s lack of predisposition regarding the relevant legal issues in a case has never been thought a necessary component of equal justice, and with good reason,”” Protasiewicz quoted. She continued, quoting the late justice:
For one thing, it is virtually impossible to find a judge who does not have preconceptions about the law. Nor would anybody want to elect such a judge: Proof that a Justice’s mind at the time he joined the Court was a complete [blank slate] in the area of constitutional adjudication would be evidence of lack of qualification, not lack of bias.
You can read the full ruling denying the motion for recusal here.
Lawsuits over Wisconsin’s voting maps have raged since the 2020 election. In May 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Wisconsin state legislative maps that had been drawn by a Democratic governor and adopted by the state’s own supreme court which created an additional majority-Black district.
In Wisconsin, impeachment of elected officials is a two-step process that first requires the state assembly to vote to impeach, then for the Senate to conduct a trial. A state officer can be convicted on impeachment by a majority vote for corrupt conduct in office or for the commission of a crime or misdemeanor, and would then face removal from office.
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