The Wisconsin Supreme Court has thrown out the flagrantly lawless injunction against Wisconsin’s budget repair bill.
That’s the good news. Unfortunately, the rule of law only prevailed 4-3. The three justices in the minority submitted a weaselly dissenting opinion (¶130 here) in which they didn’t come out and say that the law is not a law (there being no convincing legal justification to do so), but instead made the question out to be a tough call, requiring a lengthy litigation process to settle.
In particular, they conceded a controlling decision states that “courts will not review or void an act of the legislature based on its failure to comply with its own procedural rules, unless those rules embody a constitutional requirement” but suggested that the Open Records Law might just be a constitutional requirement, somehow. Good grief.
They also did not address the injunction’s bizarre contention that the process by which the bill was passed somehow violated the Open Records Law, despite the fact that the Open Records Law explicitly states that the legislature’s rules take precedence (¶57) and the legislature’s rule explicitly permits the process that was used (¶53). I suppose dealing thorny issues like that requires a lengthy litigation process.
I was hoping for a bipartisan affirmation of the rule of law. We’ll have to settle for a narrow one.
Internet Scofflaw 