(The Center Square) – Two of Wisconsin’s conservative supreme court justices say the liberal majority is playing politics.
The liberal-majority court last week agreed to accept the case that will decide how $50 million in literacy money put into the current state budget will be spent.
The question for the court is not necessarily the money, but instead, who gets to decide how is spent.
Republican lawmakers included the money in the budget, but Gov. Tony Evers vetoed it out.
Lawmakers wanted to send the money to local schools to buy new books and lesson plans for Wisconsin’s new literacy reforms. The governor said he wanted the Department of Public Instruction to spend the money instead.
Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote a dissent to the majority’s decision to accept the case, accusing the majority of playing politics.
“The court grants a premature bypass petition filed by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and Governor Tony Evers, which presents issues related to the exercise of Governor Evers’ partial veto authority,” she wrote. “Earlier this term, the court heard another case involving the interpretation of the same constitutional provision as applied to the Governor’s partial veto authority. The court has not released its opinion, so the parties in this case do not have the benefit of the court’s decision.”
Chief Justice Annette Ziegler agreed with the dissent.
Bradley added the liberal justices seem to have no legal standards in deciding which cases to fast track, and which to allow to go through the appeals court process.
“Process matters. The members of the majority sometimes enforce a rule against ‘premature petitions’ but sometimes they don’t, without disclosing any standards by which they will choose whether to apply it. Such arbitrariness by courts is antithetical to the original understanding of the judicial role,” Bradley wrote.
But she finished with her strongest accusation, arguing the justices are making decisions for political reasons, and not constitutional questions.
“The majority’s arbitrariness in following its professed procedure in one case while discarding it in another sends a message to litigants that judicial process will be invoked or ignored based on the party filing the petition or the majority’s desired outcome in a politically charged case,” Bradley wrote.
