<html>
<head>
<style><!--
.hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;
padding:0px
}
body.hmmessage
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family:Tahoma
}
--></style>
</head>
<body class='hmmessage'>
<A href="http://www.truth-out.org/wisconsin-court-reinstates-law-union-rights/1308146078">http://www.truth-out.org/wisconsin-court-reinstates-law-union-rights/1308146078</A><BR>
<BR>
<H2 style="FONT-SIZE: 35px" class=title>Wisconsin Court Reinstates Law on Union Rights</H2>
<DIV class=meta><SPAN class=submitted>Wednesday 15 June 2011</SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=source>by: Monica Davey, <A href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/us/politics/15wisconsin.html?ref=us">The New York Times News Service</A> | Report </DIV>
<DIV class="content clearfix">
<DIV class=art-body>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="2">The Wisconsin Supreme Court cleared the way on Tuesday for significant cuts to collective bargaining rights for public workers in the state, undoing a lower court’s decision that Wisconsin’s controversial law had been passed improperly.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="3">The Supreme Court’s <A href="http://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.html?content=html&seqNo=66078" target=_blank>ruling</A>, issued at the close of the business day, spared lawmakers in the Republican-dominated Capitol from having to do what some of them strongly hoped to avoid: calling for a new vote on the polarizing collective bargaining measure, which had drawn tens of thousands of protesters to Madison this year and led Democratic lawmakers to flee the city in an effort to block the bill.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="4">Republican leaders had warned on Monday that if the Supreme Court did not rule by Tuesday, they would feel compelled to attach the same measure to the state’s budget bill, which is expected to be approved this week.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="5">Four months after the fight began, the decision ended, at least for now, lingering questions about when and whether the cuts would take effect, but it also underscored the state’s partisan divide, which seems to grow wider by the day. The ruling was 4 to 3, split along what many viewed as the court’s predictable conservative-liberal line. One of the dissenting justices even raised the specter of a “partisan slant” by the other side.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="6">The majority of the justices concluded that a lower court was wrong when it found that the Legislature had forced through the cuts in collective bargaining without giving sufficient notice — 24 hours — under the state’s open-meetings requirements. The measure passed in early March, three weeks after the State Senate’s Democrats fled to Illinois to block the vote from occurring.</P>
<P class="rteleft sweet-justice" jQuery1308168591226="7"><EM><A href="http://www.truth-out.org/newsletter" target=_blank>Stay informed with free Truthout updates delivered straight to your email inbox. Click here to sign up.</A> </EM></P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="8">In its written decision, the court cited the importance of the separation of powers, and said the Legislature had not violated the state’s Constitution when it relied on its “interpretation of its own rules of proceeding” and gave slightly less than two hours’ notice before meeting and voting. In the end, the provision passed without the attendance of any of the Senate’s 14 Democrats.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="9">Justice David T. Prosser, whose re-election bid was threatened this year because he was seen as a conservative who would cast the deciding vote on the collective bargaining measure if it came before the court, voted to overturn the lower court ruling. He issued his own opinion concurring with the majority.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="10">Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson, who is viewed by many as leading the court’s liberal wing, wrote a scathing opinion that accused the majority of a “hasty judgment.”</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="11">“It is long on rhetoric and long on story-telling that appears to have a partisan slant,” Chief Justice Abrahamson wrote of Justice Prosser’s opinion, later adding, “This kind of order seems to open the court unnecessarily to the charge that the majority has reached a pre-determined conclusion not based on the facts and the law, which undermines the majority’s ultimate decision.”</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="12">Republicans, who won control of both legislative chambers and the governor’s office in last November’s elections, praised the ruling, and said they could now move forward with what some of them describe as a fiscally wise budget.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="13">“The Supreme Court’s ruling provides our state the opportunity to move forward together and focus on getting Wisconsin working again,” Gov. Scott Walker said.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="14">Scott and Jeff Fitzgerald — brothers and Republican leaders in the Legislature — issued a statement describing the ruling as unsurprising. “We followed the law when the bill was passed, simple as that,” they said.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="15">Democrats said the court’s decision was unsurprising given a battle that has turned so fierce. Protesters, again, were mounting at the Capitol. Democratic leaders said they planned to remind voters of the collective bargaining bill in the weeks before Senate recall elections that grew out of the fight.</P>
<P class=sweet-justice jQuery1308168591226="16">“I guarantee you, some Republicans are breathing a sigh of relief about not having to take this up again,” said Senator Christopher Larson, a Democrat. “On the other hand, these justices just sent a reminder to voters of what has happened here.”</P></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-STYLE: italic; FONT-SIZE: 1.2em">© 2011 The New York Times Company <BR>Truthout has licensed this content. It may not be reproduced by any other source and is not covered by our Creative Commons license. </DIV></DIV>
<BR><BR> <BR>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=2>Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monitory gain to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the material for research and educational purposes. This is in accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. section 107..<BR></FONT><A href="http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html" target=_blank><FONT color=#0066cc size=2>http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html</FONT></A></FONT></DIV><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman"></FONT> <BR><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">Listen to Native Voice One <A href="http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/nv1/ppr/index.shtml" target=_blank>http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/nv1/ppr/index.shtml</A><BR>
<DIV><BR></DIV></FONT>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR> </DIV>
<H2><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR> </H2><BR><BR> </body>
</html>