State lawmakers are calling for the ousting of a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice after allegations surfaced in December that several state ethics codes had been violated.
A joint resolution, drafted by Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison, said Justice Michael Gableman violated the state’s ethics codes while presiding over cases involving a law firm that had previously represented him without charging any legal fees.
“Justice Gableman’s legal and ethical misconduct regrettably compel the Legislature to remove him,” Roys said. “I hope by doing so we can start to rebuild the public’s trust in Wisconsin’s government that has been broken over the past year.”
According to Wisconsin’s ethics code, a state public official is prohibited to solicit or accept anything of value if it can reasonably be expected to influence the official’s judgment or could reasonably be considered as a reward for official actions.
In an email to The Badger Herald, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald’s spokesperson Andrew Welhouse responded to Roys’ resolution, comparing it to attempts to trigger a recall election against Gov. Scott Walker.
“They’re trying to overturn one statewide election with the recall of Gov. Walker, and now they’re trying to overturn another with Justice Gableman,” Welhouse said. “At some point, you would think they’d realize that there’s more to Wisconsin than what Madison wants and that elections actually matter in a democracy.”
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign said in a statement released in late December that it was the first to file an ethical complaint against Gableman.
According to the statement, Gableman failed to disclose and recuse himself from cases in which Best & Friedrich Law Firm appeared before him, including a suit seeking to invalidate the Milwaukee Sick Leave Ordinance.
Had Gableman recused himself from the paid sick days case, the statement said a 3-3 judgment would have been a 3-2 Supreme Court majority which would have overturned the injunction and enabled more than 120,000 Milwaukee families to receive sick days.
A day before Roys released her resolution, the 9to5 National Association of Working Women also filed a complaint against Gableman, reflecting many of the same complaints WDC’s original complaint addressed.
“Justice Gableman has compromised the trust of the Wisconsinites he was elected to serve,” 9to5 Director Dana Schultz said in a statement.
According to Mike McCabe, WDC Executive Director, his organization and 9to5 are the only two groups that have publicly filed complaints against Gableman on the ethic charges.
The state Constitution requires a two-thirds majority from both houses to remove the justice, Roys said. She requested fellow legislators sign the resolution by Jan. 18.
Still, McCabe said it would be hard to imagine the resolution passing the Legislature as it exists today.
“Its unlikely the governor would support it,” McCabe said. “It’s unlikely justice [will be] coming from the Legislature in this instance. That’s why our focus has been filing the complaint with the [Government Accountability Board] and the state’s judicial commission to trigger investigation by those agencies. It’s just the more realistic path.”
