It finally happened. After nearly 15 years of trying, and trying, and trying again, liberals believe they have finally gotten rid of Act 10. A Dane County judge with a deep conflict of interest used truly tortured logic to strike down the landmark law, which the MacIver Institute has found saved Wisconsin taxpayers more than $31 billion since it was passed in early 2011.
Of course, the law was immediately challenged, but the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that it was perfectly constitutional. There was also a challenge to the law in federal court, which was also reversed on appeal. A decade ago, both the state and federal court systems approved Act 10, but now that the State Supreme Court is back under liberal control for the first time since before Act 10 was passed, it’s been challenged again.
And for now, at least, it’s been ruled unconstitutional…by a judge who signed the Scott Walker recall petition. Before he became a judge, Jacob Frost signed his name on a document indicating not only his opposition to Act 10, but his belief that the Governor who introduced it should be removed from office because of it.
That creates an impermissible conflict of interest for Judge Frost. Wisconsin’s Code of Judicial Conduct is crystal clear on this: “A judge shall recuse himself or herself in a proceeding when the facts and circumstances the judge knows or reasonably should know” establish that “the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party or a party’s lawyer.”
One of the parties in the case that went before Frost is the Wisconsin Legislature, which is currently controlled by Republicans, as it was in 2011 when Act 10 was passed. Frost so hated the party then that he wanted its leader, Scott Walker, booted out of the governor’s mansion over the very law that was at issue in the case before him!
He should have recused himself, if only so that the public wouldn’t see how flimsy his reasoning for overturning Act 10 really was. When the law was passed, it exempted most, but not all, public safety employees. Others were categorized as “general” employees were covered. Frost held that since some public safety employees were covered and others were not, the law violated the equal protection guarantees of the Wisconsin Constitution.
This is ludicrous on its face: Equal protection guarantees apply to immutable characteristics like race and gender, not employment classification. And even if they were, Frost could have easily struck the definition of “public safety employee” altogether and left the rest of the law in place. In other words, he could have held that the law must apply to all public safety employees or none at all, while still keeping the law itself in place.
He didn’t. Because he didn’t want to, regardless of what either the Wisconsin Constitution or prior Supreme Court precedent say. That mentality is also why the current Supreme Court is almost certain to uphold Judge Frost’s horrible ruling. The four liberal justices have been itching to do so since they first reclaimed the majority, and now they have their chance…regardless of how nonsensical their ruling may be or how many billions it will end up costing taxpayers.
