Assembly Speaker Robin Vos continues to threaten Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz with impeachment over a redistricting lawsuit despite objections from past justices.
Vos, R-Rochester, has threatened to impeach Protasiewicz if she sides with Democrats in a case challenging Wisconsin’s legislative maps in the upcoming trial of Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Republican backlash came after Protasiewicz’s campaign for Supreme Court Justice in April of 2023 where she accepted a $10 million campaign donation from the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Protasiewicz also called Wisconsin’s maps “rigged” and “unfair” on the campaign trail.
This prompted Vos to consider Protasiewicz’s impeachment on the grounds of her statement violating the judicial code of ethics.
Protasiewicz rebuked Vos’ claims, declining to recuse herself from two redistricting lawsuits in an Oct. 6 statement.
The redistricting case does not list the state Democratic Party as a plaintiff, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that the First Amendment allows judicial candidates to state opinions on disputed political or legal issues.
“Recusal decisions are controlled by the law. They are not a matter of personal preference,” Protasiewicz said. “If precedent requires it, I must recuse. But if precedent does not warrant recusal, my oath binds me to participate.”
Protasiewicz also mentioned some Wisconsin justices in 2021 accepted Republican Party donations but were not asked to recuse themselves fromJohnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the case that set Wisconsin’s current electoral maps.
Vos revoked his initial threat of impeachment but will look further into the possibility if Protasiewicz votes for redistricting in the upcoming case, according to US News and World Report.
“If they decide to inject their own political bias inside the process and not follow the law, we have the ability to go to the [U.S.] Supreme Court and we also have the ability to hold her accountable to the voters of Wisconsin,” Vos told The New York Times.
Vos met with former conservative Supreme Court Justices David Prosser, Patience Roggensack and Jon Wilcox in early October to discuss the possibility of impeachment. Prosser advised Vos to drop the charge and said during their meeting it “will be viewed as unreasonable partisan politics,” according to the Cap Times.
Prosser went on to call Vos’ statements “mere political grievance” and said there was limited empirical evidence for Protasiewicz’s impeachment.
Wilcox took a similar stance against impeachment.
“Impeachment is something people have been throwing around all the time. But I think it’s for very serious things,” he told The Associated Press.
Wilcox also said he met with Prosser and Roggensack and told them he does not endorse impeachment, according to The Washington Post.
The Senate will meet Thursday to continue discussion on a GOP nonpartisan redistricting plan introduced in September. Democratic lawmakers oppose the plan as currently written, and Gov. Tony Evers has indicated he would veto it.
“Republicans are making a last-ditch effort to retain legislative control by having someone Legislature-picked and Legislature-approved drawn Wisconsin’s maps,” Evers said when Republicans unveiled their plan.
Wisconsin is considered to be one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the nation. However, the 2011 U.S. Supreme Court case Gill v. Whitford set a precedent that the court cannot hear partisan gerrymandering cases, meaning state redistricting debates must largely be solved at the state level, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.
