CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Let’s explore today whether the U.S. Supreme Court will be a backstop when our now-liberal State Supreme Court runs amuck.
I’m hopeful. The nation’s highest court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has a history of beating back liberal excesses. The court can intervene when a state court violates its own constitution or violates federal law. But remember, 7,000 cases are appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court each year. They accept between 100 and 150 cases per term.
My assessment is the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to intervene in the voting maps case. There are two legal arguments the court might consider. First, the state constitution says the legislature, not the courts or the governor, draw the voting boundaries. A court that draws its own maps violates the state constitution. Second, the U.S. Supreme Court has already reviewed a case that challenged the current maps in Wisconsin and ruled before the 2022 election that the maps were constitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court is less likely, but may also intervene, in efforts to overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 ban on abortion. It’s because the logic in the case before the state supreme court is ridiculously wrong. The “oldness” of a law does not make it invalid. Old laws must be repealed by an act of the legislature. And there was a time during Jim Doyle’s time as governor when pro-choice democrats had control of all the levers of government, yet the law wasn’t repealed.
The state supreme court may also try to undo Act 10, and school choice, and limits on local tax increases. All of those items are also in state law, passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. The court undoing long-standing state law is legally dubious, but I’m not sure those cases will rise to the national constitutional questions that the Supreme Court deals with.
Remember, our state Supreme Court is an elected body. The better path to stop liberals-gone-wild is to elect more constitutionalist judges.
Chris Conley
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