Until further review by a higher court, a Dane County court’s decision that struck down parts of the collective bargaining law last month will remain unconstitutional and not in effect because the judge chose not to stay his ruling Monday.
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Col?s decided he would not stay his ruling on parts he found unconstitutional in Act 10, the law that limited collective bargaining for Wisconsin public employees in 2010. His ruling only applied to local government and school district employees, not state employees.
Col?s noted in his ruling that there are four factors that would cause him to stay the ruling until a higher court makes a decision on it. He noted that his decision would be “found likely to succeed” in an appeal, something that he said is done automatically in cases like this when a ruling is struck down.
“However, likelihood of success is only one of the four factors and it is weighed with the other three,” Col?s said in his ruling. “Defendants have failed to show that they will suffer irreparable harm if the stay is not granted and that a stay will not harm other interested parties or the public interest, the other three factors.”
The defendants, Wisconsin’s Department of Justice, would probably ask the court of appeals to stay the ruling soon, DOJ spokesperson Dana Brueck said in an email to The Badger Herald.
Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, was disappointed by the decision made today.
“It’s unfortunate that judges do not realize that their delays cause so much uncertainty and cost to so many people,” Grothman said.
In mid-September, Col?s decided the limits on collective bargaining for local government and school district employees were unconstitutional.
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said he would appeal the ruling at the time, but he had been also seeking for the ruling to be removed until the court of appeals decided whether the parts of the law struck down were valid.
Col?s had struck down the law because he said it violated state and federal freedoms of speech and association and the federal equal protection clause. He had found the employees would have “burdensome restrictions” imposed on them because they had joined a public sector union.
