The state university’s fight song is called “On, Wisconsin,” but ever since Gov. Scott Walker and the Re publican-controlled Legislature in Madison began their epic battle with public-employee unions, it’s been more like “On and On and On, Wisconsin.”
Now it’s over — and the good guys won.
In a decision Tuesday with national implications, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi had overstepped her bounds when she invalidated the state’s so-called Budget Repair bill, which stripped most public-employee unions of their collective-bargaining privileges.
“One of the courts that we are charged with supervising has usurped the legislative power which the Wisconsin constitution grants exclusively to the legislature,” the high court wrote in vacating Sumi’s ruling. The “Budget Repair” law will now take effect on June 29, although more legal challenges to the law’s specifics are expected.
Talk about a knock-down, drag-out fight: In a bare-knuckled effort to overturn the results of last fall’s election, the state unions and their Democratic allies waged a scorched-earth campaign against the law, as the state sought to close a $3.1 billion shortfall over the next two years.
Their tactics included a prolonged sit-in at the Capitol, marches, threats of violence and recall petitions. Fourteen Democratic lawmakers even fled the state for weeks to prevent a vote and, when that didn’t work, found a friendly judge to throw out the law on a technicality.
The decision is not just a win for Wisconsin — it’s a victory for constitutionality and the separation of powers across the country.
Partisan judges must not be allowed to override the duly elected legislatures to satisfy their own political positions, nor should they be able to tell the legislatures how to interpret their own rules. In the Wisconsin case, Judge Sumi invalidated the law on the risible grounds that its passage violated the advance-notice requirements of the state’s Open Meetings Law — as if the Budget Repair bill hadn’t been Topic A for months.
Wrote the high court: “In the posting of notice that was done, the legislature relied on its interpretation of its own rules of proceeding. The court declines to review the validity of the procedure.” In other words, when it comes to way the legislature runs its business, the courts should butt out.
It’s about time somebody said so. In the dreadful mess called Bush v. Gore, the US Supreme Court was dragged into the Florida recount in part because the state supreme court had misinterpreted state election law duly enacted by the Legislature.
Something similar happened in New Jersey in the fall of 2002, when scandal-plagued Sen. Robert Torricelli abruptly dropped out of his race for re-election. Although the statutory deadline had passed, the state supreme court effectively overruled the legislature and allowed Torricelli to be replaced on the ballot by Frank Lautenberg, who cruised to victory.
Naturally, the dissent in the Wisconsin ruling was stinging. Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, a liberal, accused the conservative majority of reaching its decision in haste and said the justices had “set forth their own version of facts without evidence. They should not engage in this disinformation.” She bitterly disagreed with Justice David Prosser, whose recent re-election to the high court was also fiercely contested by the unions and the Democrats; Prosser won by about 7,000 votes.
The ruling is most welcome. The state Republicans — several of whom now face recall elections in July — were prepared to re-pass the bill, which would have restarted the whole kerfuffle again.
The last thing the country needs is more wrangling over what should be a few simple principles. One is that the three branches of government are separate and equal, each given autonomy within their own spheres. Another is that elections ought to mean something.
Walker ran on a clear platform of fiscal reform, and the voters agreed. If, in 18 months, the residents of Wisconsin don’t like the results, they’re free to alter the makeup of the Legislature, which now has Republican majorities in both houses, and in 2014, throw Walker out on his ear.
So on and on and on, Wisconsin is over. The battle has ended in a huge defeat for the public-sector unions. Other states should take notice of Walker’s courage — and act accordingly.