(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Wisconsin's new progressive Supreme Court sets the stage for a major democracy revival [1] ['Daily Kos Staff'] Date: 2023-08-01 Wisconsin's moribund democracy had been on life support for years, but the new liberal majority that will take shape when Judge Janet Protasiewicz is sworn in to the state Supreme Court on Tuesday offers bright new hope for the restoration of rights long trampled by Republicans. At the very top of the list is abortion, the issue that powered Democrats to unexpected success last year and was central to Protasiewicz's double-digit win in her bid for the state's top court in April. Alone among states that Joe Biden carried in 2020, Wisconsin has a total ban on abortion in place thanks to a zombie law dating to 1849 that was reanimated after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. That ban has been challenged in court by Attorney General Josh Kaul, and eventually, his lawsuit is all but certain to go before the state Supreme Court. While she was running for office, Protasiewicz was careful to avoid saying how she might rule on this case, but she was unusually forthright about her support for abortion rights in principle on the campaign trail, and there's no reason to think her three progressive colleagues feel differently. A ruling striking down the 1849 ban (which Kaul says has been superseded by subsequent statutes) would at long last bring Wisconsin back in line with mainstream America. But the changes we can expect would by no means end there. The lynchpin of the GOP's stranglehold on state politics has, since 2010, been its abusive gerrymandering of Wisconsin's electoral maps—a practice greenlighted by the Supreme Court's conservatives. Those justices once again gave their imprimatur to those gerrymanders last year when the court took over the redistricting process after a predictable impasse between Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. With no basis in law, the far-right majority decreed that any new maps should be adjusted for shifts in population by making the smallest possible changes from the previous maps—maps that Republicans had carefully drawn in their favor a decade earlier. Unsurprisingly, Republicans rode these maps to a supermajority in the state Senate last year and came just two seats short in the Assembly, despite the fact that Evers simultaneously won a second term. Protasiewicz had harsh words for those maps, slamming them as "rigged." "They do not reflect people in this state," she said. "I don't think you could sell any reasonable person that the maps are fair." We already know the court's progressives agree since they joined in a blistering dissent warning that signing off on such "sharply partisan" maps would have "potentially devastating consequences for representative government in Wisconsin." A progressive group had previously promised to ask the Supreme Court to revisit this decision just as soon as Protasiewicz is seated, and there's good reason to think it will. The court would be empowered to order new districts—fair, nonpartisan districts—which would not only give Democrats a shot at winning but would restore voters' rights to enjoy a genuinely representative government. Given the court's extremely wide jurisdiction, there's much, much more it could address, such as Act 10, the notorious 2011 law spearheaded by then-Gov. Scott Walker that stripped public employees of their collective bargaining right and was upheld by the court. And should Democrats retake the legislature one day, there's even more they might do, like closing a massive campaign finance loophole that allows wealthy donors to funnel unlimited contributions to candidates. We've already seen the great extent to which Democrats have revived and buttressed democracy in two neighboring states, Michigan and Minnesota, after winning control of state government last year. Protasiewicz's victory opens the door for a similar revival in Wisconsin. As much as we might not like America's unusual practice of electing judges, we're about to see a very vivid demonstration of why these races are so critically important. A previous version of this piece ran in April 2023. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/1/2184559/-Wisconsin-s-new-progressive-Supreme-Court-sets-the-stage-for-a-major-democracy-revival Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/