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| Illustration by Victor Juhasz in Rolling Stone Magazine |
The officials' concern is warranted.
The Republican Party addresses individual political and electoral activity as illegitimate if the outcome is adverse to Republican Party interests — a fundamentally unconstitutional policy scheme in American election law.
Though Republicans were too frightened to impose new voting restrictions before the 2018 general election, Republican legislative leaders planned to and did impose restrictions after the election, in brazen defiance of a United States district judge's injunctions in One Wisconsin.
In a December lame-duck session, Republicans passed new laws as though One Wisconsin were never litigated, and no federal injunctions existed.
Yesterday, the same judge, U.S. District Judge James Peterson, who just 18 months earlier found Republican restrictions on voting rights unconstitutional, made quick work of the Republican Party's legislation in his order and opinion.
The Republican defiance of the federal injunctions was near certain to draw a rebuke from Judge Peterson. It did.
Notes Ed Treleven in the Wisconsin State Journal:
In his order, Peterson wrote that arguments by the state about the dissimilarity between the newly passed law and the limits on in-person absentee voting that Peterson barred were not persuasive.
'If the court accepted defendants’ argument, it would mean that a legislative body could evade an injunction simply by reenacting an identical law and giving it a new number,' he wrote.
Wrote Peterson in his five-page judicial analysis:
This is not a close question: the three challenged provisions are clearly inconsistent with the injunctions that the court has issued in this case (p. 1).
Republican Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, Robin Vos, dismissed the order without reference to Peterson's reasoning.
Reports WISC-TV:
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos answered a question from News 3 about the ruling while walking down the hallway. He said 'surprise, surprise' that a 'liberal' judge from Dane County would strike down the ruling. He did not elaborate further.
I asked @SpeakerVos about the ruling from a federal judge striking down the limits on early voting as he walked down the hallway at the Capitol.— Rose Schmidt (@RoseSchmidtTV) January 17, 2019
He said “surprise, surprise” that a “liberal judge from Dane County” would strike down the ruling. #news3
Such dismissive posture that a federal judge is a "liberal" echoes the worst of 1950s desegregation fights in the deep south when southern politicians declared federal judges were illegitimate.
Wisconsin Republicans are betting that four new Trump-appointed judges to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit—vetted by the Federalist Society to whom Trump outsources vetting of judicial appointments—will ultimately sustain the Republican Party position against voting rights.
The four judges are expected to be hostile to voting rights, and were nominated because of their rightwing jurisprudence and fidelity to the Republican Party.
The Trump-nominated judges are: Amy C. Barrett, Michael B. Brennan, Michael Y. Scudder, Jr., and Amy J. St. Eve.
It's a hell of a gambit.
Wisconsin has a new pro-voting rights attorney general who likely will alter the state's position on federal voting rights litigation.
In the meantime, the Republican Party effectively thumbing their noses at the federal judiciary hearing election law and Constitutional cases does not help the Party's weak case on voting rights.
The stakes are high, and continued Republican defiance of judicial authority should draw some measure of judicial censure and increased public concern.
