Republicans should not pursue impeachment of a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, concluded a conservative former justice whom Wisconsin Republicans tasked to look into the matter.
“To sum up my views, there should be no effort to impeach Justice [Janet] Protasiewicz on anything we know now,” David Prosser wrote in a letter dated Friday to state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican.
“Impeachment is so serious, severe, and rare that it should not be considered unless the subject has committed a crime, or the subject has committed indisputable corrupt conduct while in office,” he continued.
Prosser’s letter was obtained Monday by American Oversight, a left-leaning government watchdog, as part of a public records request related to a suit alleging that the panel had violated state laws by not letting members of the public attend its meetings. American Oversight shared the documents with NBC News. Prosser’s letter was first reported by the Associated Press.
Protasiewicz’s win in April was a significant success for liberals, because it gave them their first majority on the technically nonpartisan court in 15 years.
Weeks after she was sworn in, Wisconsin Republicans, including Vos, began discussing the possibility of impeaching her if she refused to recuse herself from a redistricting lawsuit that could upend the GOP’s power in the state Legislature.
Last month, Vos convened a panel of three former state Supreme Court justices to explore whether it would be possible to impeach Protasiewicz. Prosser — who was also once served as a Republican Assembly speaker — is the only member whose identity is publicly known.
Prosser explained that the Wisconsin state constitution “clearly” outlines that the Assembly’s impeachment powers of civil officers is “limited to” those who have “engaged in ‘corrupt conduct in office, or for crimes and misdemeanors,’” adding that Protasiewicz’s prior comments regarding her views on the Republican-drawn maps did not amount to such conduct.
“Corrupt conduct is not a term that is open to a mere political grievance,” he wrote.
During her campaign for Supreme Court, Protasiewicz criticized the state’s maps as being “unfair” and “rigged” — statements that Wisconsin Republicans have used to demand that she recuse herself from all redistricting cases before the state’s high court.
On Friday, Protasiewicz formally said she would not recuse from one such suit before the court, leading to a 4-3 vote of the justices to hear the case during the current term.
Prosser, in his letter, however, seemed to defend Protasiewicz at times, pointing out that she had also “repeatedly stated that she could not say how she would decide a case about the reapportionment maps” and that “she would not participate in a case in which the Democratic Party of Wisconsin was a party.”
“These two statements reveal that Justice Protasiewicz is conscious of the Supreme Court’s ethical rules for justices and judges,” Prosser wrote.
A spokesperson for Vos did not respond to questions from NBC News about whether he’d still be moving forward with impeachment efforts.
The release of Prosser’s letter is the latest development in a monthslong saga following Protasiewicz’s. Her win gave the court’s new liberal majority the power to determine the future of several pivotal issues the bench is likely to decide in the coming years, including abortion rights and the state’s legislative maps.
The current map, which experts have said is one of the most gerrymandered in the country, was approved by the current state Supreme Court last year. (As is the case in many states, in Wisconsin, if the governor and the Legislature cannot agree on legislative maps, the issue falls to the state Supreme Court). A map more favorable to Democrats could threaten to undo decades of Republican lawmaking.
Just days after Protasiewicz’s victory in April, some Republican lawmakers began openly talking about the possibility of impeaching her. Such chatter among Republicans never abated.
In a Sept. 13 announcement, Vos said he’d tasked a panel of “former members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to review and advise what the criteria are for impeachment” and directed the group to “come back with an analysis to say whether or not” impeachment “is possible and how it should occur.”
The secretive group has still not disclosed the identities of its two other members, though text messages released by Prosser in response to the American Oversight suit indicate that that former state Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack — the conservative jurist whom Protasiewicz replaced after she retired — was part of the group. A spokesperson for Roggensack didn’t immediately respond to questions from NBC News.
In recent weeks, momentum against the feasibility of impeachment proceedings against Protasiewicz has grown. Last week, for example, before the release of the Prosser letter, the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, a panel that handles disciplinary matters of state judges, rejected a lawsuit alleging that Protasiewicz’s comments about the maps during her campaign had violated the state’s judicial code of ethics.
Meanwhile, the court’s new liberal majority began with a tense start, with the initial days of the fresh term kicking off in August with the firing of a longtime court officer and days of bitter news releases and tweets among the justices.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
