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Wisconsin Public Radio: Judge threatens to fine Assembly Speaker over Michael Gableman's failure to comply with court order.
"What you're telling me is Mr. (Robin) Vos hired a contractor who should be under his control, and he's just run amok and is flatly refusing to follow any of the court's guidance or orders," (Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie) Bailey-Rihn said. "That leaves me to think that they're hiding something." Bailey-Rihn told (attorney Ronald) Stadler that she wanted a sworn affidavit from (Michael) Gableman answering several questions about the records request from American Oversight, including who worked for Gableman from June 1, 2021 until Aug. 30, 2021, where they stored digital records, what attempts they took to produce those records, and which records had been destroyed. "I'm really skeptical when I can't get an answer from the person who has the answers," Bailey-Rihn said. Slate: Mark Joseph Stern (who spoke at our event last night!) on some states' quick expansion of abortion protections. The Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer, transforming a constitutional right into a policy dispute subject to the whims of each state’s political process. Republican-controlled legislatures—as many as 22 of them—have already teed up abortion bans that will spring into effect once Roe falls. But what about blue and purple states, where a majority of the country resides? These states are about to become the chief battleground for reproductive freedom. And while the post-Roe future is not even here quite yet, progressives are doing a remarkably good job preparing for the next phase of the fight. Indeed, one irony of Roe’s demise is that it has prompted many of these states to make abortions easier and cheaper to obtain. The Supreme Court’s hard-right turn has had the unintended consequence of making abortions much more accessible in many parts of the country. U.S. Department of Justice: Attorney General appoints director of Office for Access to Justice. CNN: ATF Report shows that U.S. yearly gun production has nearly tripled since 2000. The report is part of an ongoing efforts from the Biden administration to address the gun violence epidemic in America. "We need to know who is using guns in crimes so we can focus our enforcement efforts on those individuals, And this data does just that. It helps us tailor our approach at the most significant drivers of gun violence and take those shooters off the streets," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Tuesday, speaking to federal and local law enforcement officials from around the country to mark the beginning of a two-day national summit focused on reducing violence. San Francisco Chronicle: Federal appeals court rules that 2018 legislation allows hemp form of cannabis. The court said Delta-8 THC has “psychoactive and intoxicating effects” like those of marijuana, but is not a marijuana product, was not explicitly banned by laws against marijuana and other drugs, and became legal when Congress allowed the growing and marketing of hemp, an action spearheaded by then-Senate Majority Leader Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “Regardless of the wisdom of legalizing Delta-8 THC products, this court will not substitute its own policy judgment for that of Congress,” Judge D. Michael Fisher said in the 3-0 ruling. If the legalization was inadvertent, he said, Congress can change it. Above the Law: Fifth Circuit essentially destroys SEC. The Fifth Circuit gutted the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday, deciding that the Seventh Amendment demands that the SEC can’t use Administrative Law Judges and must send every minor securities infraction to an Article III court to get dragged through a jury trial. Because Thomas Jefferson never thought about credit-default swaps.
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Vanity Fair: Wisconsin's official 2020 electors sue the Republicans' purported electors.
“Defendants not only helped lay the groundwork for the events of January 6, 2021, but also inflicted lasting damage on Wisconsin’s civic fabric,” the complaint reads. The complaint, filed on behalf of Wisconsin’s official electors, seeks a “definitive statement” from the court that the scheme was improper, as well as punitive damages from the Republican electors who allegedly met to draft fake paperwork delivering the state’s 10 electoral votes to Trump: Andrew Hitt; Robert F. Spindell, Jr.; Bill Feehan; Kelly Ruh; Carol Brummer; Edward Scott Grabins; Kathy Kiernan; Darryl Carlson; Pam Travis; and Mary Buestrin. It also names attorneys James R. Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro, who in a memo following the 2020 election discussed the plan to introduce competing electors. Two of the defendants, Hitt and Ruh, were subpoenaed earlier this year by the House select committee investigating January 6, which is examining the fake electors plot as part of its probe. (Hitt agreed to comply.) “There needs to be accountability for the fraudulent electors, because otherwise this will just happen again and again,” Jeffrey Mandell, the Wisconsin lawyer who filed the suit, tells Vanity Fair. “If we don’t have accountability, if we don’t have clarity on this, the system breaks down. It alienates people from democracy. This is a place where we need to restore some norms.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee police now enforcing city's curfew for minors. Although none of those arrested were minors, (Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey) Norman said officials decided to enforce the curfew as a form of protection. Minors have been increasingly caught up in the city’s historic violent crime over the last two and a half years. ... Norman said the enforcement will extend to parents of children violating the curfew as well. The city’s curfew ordinance prohibits anyone 17 and younger to congregate in public spaces during overnight hours, starting at either 10 or 11 p.m. and lasting until 5 a.m., depending on the day of the week and time of year. Fines can range from $100 to $200 and can be extended to minors themselves, along with parents and business owners. Exceptions are made for minors in the company of a parent or guardian. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Judge tosses $1.4 million jury verdict against Ald. Bob Bauman. A judge has thrown out jury verdicts that Milwaukee Ald. Bob Bauman wrongly defamed a nonprofit housing agency in the 2000s and should pay $1.4 million in damages. Circuit Judge Pedro Colón found the plaintiff, Tri-Corp Housing, Inc., was a "limited purpose public figure" and therefore needed to prove Bauman acted with actual malice, and failed to do so. WPR and Wisconsin Watch: Episode 3 of the Open and Shut podcast — looking back at problems in the Mark Price case involving Joe Paulus and Vince Biskupic. Axios: Awaiting a presidential executive order on police reform. Above the Law: Female D.C. Circuit Judge hasn't hired a female law clerk in 20 years. Since being elevated to the appellate court in 1990 by George H. W. Bush (prior to that she was on the district court of South Carolina), (D.C. Circuit) Judge (Karen L.) Henderson has only hired one female law clerk. ... This hiring pattern was revealed as part of a confidential workplace survey conducted in the D.C. district and circuit courts, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Post. Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan said the survey — which was completed by more than 400 current and former court employees — was conducted as part of an effort to ensure all employees are treated with dignity and respect. And yet, what the survey revealed was allegations of discrimination and bullying. Governing: Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson's plan to address safety and other issues.
(Mayor Cavalier) Johnson repeatedly stressed that public safety was the top issue facing the city, but he knew he was inheriting other challenges. The city’s annual pension payment is on track to balloon from $71 million to $145 million next year. A pension task force warned last fall that the spike could lead to layoffs for a quarter of city workers. One voter told Johnson that, as mayor, he’d have to choose between “a whole pile of no good.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Former state senator pleads guilty to charges of failure to pay employment taxes. Kevin Shibilski, 60, of Merrill, appeared in front of federal district court Judge William Conley and pleaded guilty to failing to truthfully account for and pay the Internal Revenue Service the federal income taxes withheld and the FICA taxes owed on behalf of his employees at two of his businesses — Pure Extractions and Wisconsin Logistics Solutions. Vox: Supreme Court decision in favor of Ted Cruz makes it easier to bribe officials. The Court’s decision in FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate is a boon to wealthy candidates. It strikes down an anti-bribery law that limited the amount of money candidates could raise after an election in order to repay loans they made to their own campaign. ... The idea is that, if already-elected officials can solicit donations to repay what is effectively their own personal debt, lobbyists and others seeking to influence lawmakers can put money directly into the elected official’s pocket — and campaign donations that personally enrich a lawmaker are particularly likely to lead to corrupt bargains. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) manufactured a case to try to overturn that $250,000 limit, and now, the Court has sided with him. Above the Law: Opinion on the law profs who think Alito is right in his draft upending Roe. Yale Law School’s Akhil Reed Amar took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to gently explain why Samuel Alito’s leaked Dobbs draft is entirely reasonable and legal. And you can believe him too because, as the Wall Street Journal editors gleefully note in the article’s sub-heading, Professor Amar is a “pro-choice Democrat.” . . . Is it really a side effect of living the cloistered academic life? Seeing the world as a collection of abstract positions to be mentally cabined off of each other? I dunno. All I know is the same crop of law professors show up every time there’s a turning point in America’s constitutional order to say, “move along, nothing to see here.” It might be that these law professors aren’t really liberal to begin with. Or it might be that their liberalism only extends to the issues they’ve decided matter to them. Forbes: Georgia voters appeal decision keeping Marjorie Taylor Greene on the ballot. ABC7 Chicago: Florida governor signs law criminalizing protests in front of residences. The Hill: Democratic lawmakers respond to shootings in Milwaukee and Buffalo.
“I’m devastated to learn about the senseless gun violence in Milwaukee last night. My heart breaks for the victims, their families, & the MKE community. I hope for speedy recoveries,” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) said. “This is another unfortunate reminder we must work together to confront the scourge of gun violence.” WISN: Long waitlist for GPS trackers to monitor pretrial defendants in Milwaukee County. The New York Times: Justice Clarence Thomas complains about politicization of the Supreme Court . . . at an event hosted by conservative and libertarian groups. There is no question that the court has become politicized, to its and the nation’s great detriment. But to be subjected to a lecture on that fact by Clarence Thomas, of all people, is like listening to a plutocrat lounging by his infinity pool in a bathrobe, eating a gold-plated steak while bemoaning the horrors of extreme income inequality. Has it really not occurred to the justice that by giving partisan political speeches in partisan political environments, he is precisely what is damaging the integrity of the Supreme Court? Perhaps being cosseted in prestige and power for so long makes it easy to ignore the consequences of your words and actions. Brennan Center for Justice: Understanding the concealed-carry case on which the Supreme Court is expected to rule in the next several weeks. The Trace: The National Rifle Association's interference with research on gun violence. The NRA did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment. For decades, the group has pressured lawmakers to block the collection of ownership data — and denied that its position stifles legitimate firearms research. But in a January 2021 report to board members gathered in Dallas, NRA Research and Information Division director Josh Savani acknowledged that the group’s lobbying has created a major obstacle. “All firearms research suffers from one problem: we do not know how many firearms are in the United States or how they are distributed,” Savani wrote in a brief report titled Assessing Firearm Research. “[The] NRA has long supported various federal laws and appropriation riders as well as laws at the state level to prohibit the collection and centralization of firearms records. While these laws are intended to prevent the creation of firearms registries, they also prevent researchers from conducting accurate studiewith the number and distribution of firearms as a variable.” Associated Press: How a 17-year-old with mental illness died in police custody. Owing to the hour, a team that included a mental health worker was unavailable to respond on that night last September; police alone responded. And C.J. was taken not to a mental hospital but to the county Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center, where for about 40 minutes he was held face down, resulting in his death. C.J. “went from crisis to death because we got involved,” said Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell. “We all need to own what we did right and what we did wrong,” he added. “And the reality is there’s things that happened that were wrong.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 2021 data on Milwaukee Police Department compliance with stop-and-frisk settlement. Of all the police encounters, frisks represent the Police Department’s biggest challenge at reform. In six-month increments from January 2019 through December 2020, the department failed document justification for at least 79% of frisks. Things improved with a score of 48.8% in the first half of 2021, but the April report showed no progress from there. The department failed to record justification for 53.6% of frisks in the second half of 2021. Forbes: House moves forward with ethics bill for U.S. Supreme Court, while public opinion of the court drops. BIG NUMBER 73%. That’s the share of voters in a recent Morning Consult/Politico poll who strongly or somewhat support binding Supreme Court justices to a code of ethics, as the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act would do. Supreme Court justices are not bound by the same code of conduct that governs other federal judges. Slate: Mark Joseph Stern on the Fifth Circuit's reinstatement of Texas' social-media censorship law. Texas Republicans passed their internet censorship bill, known as H.B. 20, in the fall of 2021. Its sponsors said that the legislation was necessary to prevent “West Coast oligarchs” from silencing “conservative viewpoints and ideas.” (Their theory that social media companies discriminate against conservative speech has no evident basis in reality.) The bill applies to social media companies with “more than 50 million active users” in the U.S. each month, like Twitter, YouTube, and Meta, that operate in Texas. (Republicans rejected a proposal that would’ve broadened its application to smaller conservative platforms like Parler and Gab.) It states that these companies may not “censor” a user’s expression on the basis of their “viewpoint,” whether that “viewpoint” is expressed on the company’s platform or somewhere else. If a platform removes a user’s content, it must provide them with notice and an opportunity to appeal. Alleged victims of “viewpoint discrimination” can also file suit against social media companies, as can the Texas attorney general.  Des Moines Register: Des Moines police officers denied qualified immunity for seizure of murder victim's family members for questioning.
The violation arose after Shawn Davis stabbed his brother, Preston Davis, during a family gathering in August 2017. Crysteal Davis, Preston Davis' wife; Damon Davis, another brother; and cousin Iisha Hillmon witnessed the stabbing, according to the appeals court decision. The relatives were not suspects in the killing, police said, but officers took them to the police station and questioned them for more than three hours rather than taking them to the hospital to see Preston Davis. Preston Davis, meanwhile, died. Marijuana Moment: Did Georgia police racially target HBCU Delaware State University women's lacrosse team in traffic stop and search? The incident happened as the Delaware State University women’s lacrosse team were making their way back home following a tournament. Students believe the black bus driver and players were racially targeted as officers threatened incarceration if they turned up any illegal narcotics. WUWM: UW Law School report says Wisconsin's maps are the most partisan in the country.
"On every one of these standard partisan fairness metrics, these new maps are the worst, court-adopted maps that we’ve seen anywhere in the country," says Rob Yablon, an associate professor at the law school, who published the analysis. The analysis finds that Wisconsin's state legislative maps have substantially higher levels of partisan inequity than other court-adopted maps, with a score three to five times worse on each metric. The inequity in these maps means that despite Republicans and Democrats getting approximately the same number of votes statewide, Republican politicians will likely continue to control the vast majority of seats in the Wisconsin state Legislature. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Jacob Blake dismisses his lawsuit against Kenosha officer who shot him. Reuters: The trend of criminalizing student misbehavior. Much more troubling, teachers and administrators across the state have been routinely referring students’ misbehavior to local police, turning disciplinary issues that might have previously warranted a trip to the principal’s office into law enforcement matters, according to an analysis published April 28 by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica The police issue costly tickets to students that carry long-term consequences, including tagging kids with a record and harming future credit scores. And the money extracted from families funds the system itself: It pays for lawyers who prosecute the students and for hearing officers who rule on the cases, according to the Tribune. The New York Times: The stories of five men claiming innocence who helped each other obtain freedom from New York prisons. The “Dateline” segments, which were broadcast over the span of a dozen years, bolstered each convict’s claims of innocence with new evidence and new witnesses, highlighting problems in how cases were investigated and prosecuted. The chance of even a single inmate achieving exoneration is a long shot in the New York State prison system, where out of thousands of inmate appeals, only a handful are successful each year. The fact that these five men rallied to support one another is exceptionally rare. In interviews with The New York Times, the men discussed how they bonded and worked together in prison to overturn the convictions that put them behind bars for a combined century’s worth of time. One after the other, they were released, but they would continue to help those left behind by visiting, donating money, raising awareness and even searching for other possible witnesses. Reuters: Moderna argues immunity from any patent infringement regarding COVID-19 vaccine. Facing claims that its COVID-19 vaccine violates the patent rights of two biopharma companies, Moderna Inc told a Delaware federal court on Friday that the companies should have sued the U.S. government instead. Moderna said it is shielded from the lawsuit brought by Arbutus Biopharma Corp and Genevant Sciences GmbH, thanks to its agreement to supply the vaccine to the federal government. It cited a federal law that was previously used to keep patent claims from interfering with the supply of war materials during World War I. Intelligencer: Donald Trump's new explanation for not complying with subpoenas: he can't find his cell phones. In an affidavit filed to the Supreme Court of the State of New York on Friday night, Trump’s lawyers wrote that he could not comply with state attorney general Letitia James’s subpoena to hand over documents related to a civil fraud probe into the Trump Organization because he lost the four cell phones containing those documents. “I don’t know its current whereabouts,” he says in the filing of one of the four phones provided to him by the Trump Organization. “I do not know their current location,” he says of “two flip phones and a Samsung mobile phone” he has owned since 2010 — adding that the Samsung was “was taken from me at some point while I was President.” Reuters: Retired judge Richard Posner sued for payment regarding short-lived Posner Center for Justice for Pro Se's.
DCist: Fencing and concrete barriers installed around U.S. Supreme Court building. By Wednesday evening, after two days of demonstrations, workers had begun constructing a “non-scalable,” eight-foot-tall fence around the Supreme Court building, according to NBC, similar to the fencing that surrounded the Capitol for six months following the Jan. 6 insurrection. ... Despite the ominous optics of the black metal fence and concrete slabs, the demonstrations at the Supreme Court this week have been largely peaceful — prompting criticism of the fencing as perhaps more symbolic than practical. (Some pointed out an apparent hypocrisy in the Court’s protection; in 2014, the Court struck down a law that would have added a buffer zone around clinics that provide abortion services, ruling it impeded on protesters’ First Amendment rights.) And while it’s the first time in recent years this level of security has been installed around the Supreme Court, Washingtonians are now no strangers to barricades and troops in their home city. Grid: Other instances of the Supreme Court ruling contrary to public opinion. A 2021 study found that Americans, by and large, have become more liberal since the 1990s, but six of the Supreme Court justices are staunch conservatives. “We’re going to start to see a court that’s deciding cases out of step with public opinion, and that’s something we haven’t really seen in a long time in this country,” (political scientist Michael J.) Nelson said. With the court stacked heavily in the GOP’s favor, Nelson expects more decisions to come that will cause an uproar with the American public. Vox: Warnings about the loss of Supreme Court legitimacy. The New York Times: Secretive teams within U.S. Border Patrol to be disbanded. The elimination of the teams was announced Friday in a Customs and Border Protection memo. The decision, according to the memo from Chris Magnus, the agency’s commissioner, was made “to ensure our agency achieves the highest levels of accountability.” Mr. Magnus, a former police chief, came into the job late last year with a reputation for changing up police department operations to restore public trust. Disbanding the teams — which for decades operated with little to no public awareness — is one of his first significant policy changes at the Border Patrol, which has long been criticized as lacking accountability. Reuters: Shareholder lawsuit challenges Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. WBAY: Corrections officer asks for National Guard assistance to address prison staffing shortages.
Now, a 23-year veteran of the DOC is warning Governor Tony Evers and lawmakers that backup cannot wait any longer. Through an open records request, Action 2 News obtained the email that employee sent Saturday, asking them to call in the National Guard, writing, “We immediately need the National Guard to be activated and start filling these vacant positions until Madison truly sees the horrifying outcome they have been watching develop since Act 10.” WPR: A shortage of public defenders amid a 35,000-case backlog. Wisconsin public defenders say creative solutions are needed to deal with a backlog of thousands of criminal cases in the state's courts. Last month, Wisconsin State Public Defender Kelli Thompson told WisPolitics a shortage of public defenders means it will take years to get through a 35,000-case backlog. She said her agency, which had around 615 full-time equivalent positions in the 2019 fiscal year, is around 20 percent short of being fully staffed. Courthouse News Service: Judge holds that the lame-duck law giving Legislature control over the attorney general's settlement of civil lawsuits is unconstitutional. (Dane County Circuit Judge Susan) Crawford considered the Legislature’s description of the provision as only giving lawmakers a “seat at the table” to be an understatement. “It is more accurate to characterize [the statute] as granting absolute power to the Legislature, far greater than a ‘seat at the table’ alongside the prosecutor,” Crawford wrote. Slate: Arizona's clearing of man for execution highlights the issues regarding application of the death penalty to those with mental illness. The Hill: U.S. Department of Justice announces new Office of Environmental Justice. Slate: The most extreme lines from Justice Alito's leaked opinion – and there are many. Alito justifies overturning nearly 50 years of precedent because he says women don’t have any real reliance on Roe. . . . Alito cites outdated science and questionable common law from the 17th and 18th centuries (including a 1732 journal called Gentleman’s Magazine) to justify abortion bans that would criminalize women for terminating their pregnancies. . . . Alito frames himself as a champion of women, who can now decide these issues at the ballot box—without acknowledging those ballot boxes have been rigged by Supreme Court decisions eviscerating voting rights. U.S. News & World Report: Judge orders Rep. Robin Vos to stop investigator Michael Gableman's destruction of records.
“I don’t want any records destroyed,” Dane County Circuit Judge Valeria (sic) Bailey-Rihn said. “I’m frankly amazed that I have to say, `Don’t destroy records that are subject to an open records request,' order that to occur. All of us know what the law is.” . . . “I just can’t believe the explanation is ‘We can’t control our contractors,’" Bailey-Rihn said. "That doesn’t seem to be satisfactory to the court. . . . They have to control their contractors.” Slate: Justice Roberts' investigation into the leak will be a farce. We are confident that the marshal, Col. Gail Curley, is highly competent in her duties, which include overseeing the court’s tiny police force, paying out the justices’ salaries, and shouting “oyez.” But count us skeptical that she has the tools necessary to conduct an effective probe of the leak. That’s not her fault, but the court’s: For decades, SCOTUS has resisted adopting the bare minimum reforms necessary to implement and enforce ethics rules, confidentiality guarantees, and basic transparency necessary for maintaining and ensuring the public trust. The Atlantic: Opinion on what Justice Alito gets right in his leaked opinion. CBS News: Woman who received second chance in criminal justice system now helping other women get their second chances, too. CNN: Intuit to pay $141 million to selling claims that it steered customers away from free tax services to paid versions. Bloomberg Law: No absolute immunity for Louisiana prosecutor and detective who fabricated evidence that resulted in a conviction and death sentence. Reuters: Federal judge dismisses investor's lawsuit accusing company of fraud for cofounder's impersonation of a YouTube executive. WKOW: Attorney General Josh Kaul says he's not planning to enforce old abortion prohibition if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
"Whether a law that has been dormant for essentially two generations would all of a sudden spring back to life is really an unprecedented issue," Kaul said. "I think there'd be litigation over that." Kaul, the state's top law enforcement official, said his office would not uphold the abortion law, saying the Wisconsin Department of Justice was better served focusing its resources on other crimes like homicide and drug trafficking. Wispolitics.com: Governor Tony Evers appoints Ryan Hetzel to Washington County Circuit Court. The New York Times: Who benefits from the Supreme Court leak? Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the source was probably trying to increase the price of switching positions. “In terms of who leaked it and why, it seems much more likely to me that it comes from the right in response to an actual or threatened defection by one of the five who voted to overturn Roe,” he said. “Leaking this early draft makes that more costly for a defector because now people will think that they changed their vote after the leak in response to public outrage.” The Guardian: More on the Supreme Court draft-decision leak, including statements from Marquette University law professor. Edward Fallone, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said: “It’s unprecedented. Even those few instances where a law clerk, after leaving the court, wrote a ‘tell-all’ book was viewed as unprecedented then, but for a draft opinion in the midst of the process to come out, I can’t think of any single example.” Reuters: Federal government to extend immigrant work permits due to renewal-processing backlog. Yahoo (Associated Press): Judge denies motion to dismiss lawsuit seeking government liability for 1921 Tulsa massacre. The city and insurance companies never compensated victims for their losses, and the massacre ultimately resulted in racial and economic disparities that still exist today, the lawsuit claims. In the years following the massacre, according to the lawsuit, city and county officials actively thwarted the community’s effort to rebuild and neglected the Greenwood and predominantly Black north Tulsa community in favor of overwhelmingly white parts of Tulsa. USA Today: Tennessee governor suspends 2022 executions to review lethal injection process. |
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The Wisconsin Justice Initiative Inc. does not endorse candidates for political office. The Wisconsin Justice Initiative Inc. is a 501(c)3 organization.
The Wisconsin Justice Initiative Inc. does not endorse candidates for political office. The Wisconsin Justice Initiative Inc. is a 501(c)3 organization.