Wisconsin chief justice sues over voter-approved measure that could demote her
Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson has filed a lawsuit contending that a voter-approved constitutional amendment changing the way the chief justice is selected should not take effect until her term ends in 2019.
The amendment, approved on Tuesday, requires the court’s seven justices to choose their own leader every two years, report the New York Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The court’s four conservative justices would be unlikely to choose Abrahamson for chief justice. How Appealing links to the suit (PDF).
Previously the chief justice job went to the longest serving justice. Justice at Stake issued a press release saying the measure won with the help of $600,000 in spending by a group set up by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.
“An interest group that couldn’t defeat Justice Abrahamson at the polls spent more than $600,000 targeting her through an innocuous-sounding ballot measure, and succeeded,” Justice at Stake executive director Bert Brandenburg said in the press release. “For almost a decade, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has endured a siege of special interest money and pressure from all sides, and the insulation that is supposed to protect judges from political bullying is wearing thin.”
Defendants in the federal suit include Abrahamson’s fellow justices. Abrahamson is a plaintiff along with voters who supported her. She says in the suit that she campaigned for re-election as “Wisconsin’s Chief,” and voters who supported her expected her to keep the chief justice job. Applying the new provision would deprive voters of due process rights, and deprive the plaintiffs of equal protection rights, the suit says.
