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A Wisconsin Judge Just Ripped Up Scott Walker’s Anti-Union Law [1]
['John Nichols', 'Daniel Elkind', 'Elie Mystal', 'Jules Boykoff', 'Dave Zirin', 'Alessandra Mondolfi', 'Felipe De La Hoz', 'Annabelle Heckler', 'Kali Holloway', 'Aaron Boehmer']
Date: 2024-12-04 10:00:00+00:00
Politics / A Wisconsin Judge Just Ripped Up Scott Walker’s Anti-Union Law In a major win for labor, the judge determined that Walker’s assault on worker rights was wildly unconstitutional.
Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker arrives to speak during a campaign rally for former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Dane Manufacturing in Waunakee, Wisconsin, October 1, 2024. (Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP via Getty Images)
Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s assault on labor rights was always wrong, morally and practically.
Walker, a right-wing Republican ideologue who used his position to do the bidding of out-of-state billionaires and corporate-funded “think tanks,” knew that strong unions would make it harder to implement his agenda after his election as Wisconsin’s governor in 2010. So he moved immediately to erect barriers to public-sector organizing and collective bargaining.
As part of a sweeping assault on the underpinnings of civil society, and democracy, Walker unveiled his anti-union Act 10 within days of taking office in 2011. The proposal sparked mass protests by teachers, nurses, librarians, sanitation workers, and other public employees. But Walker pressed ahead with Act 10, which gave special preferences to a handful of public-safety employees while denying them to the vast majority of state, county, and municipal employees. After it was approved by the legislature, the measure was rubberstamped by a state Supreme Court where the conservative majority served as Walker’s amen corner.
Even when Walker’s political career crashed and burned—with the jarring failure of his 2016 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, and the defeat of his 2018 campaign for a third term—Act 10 remained on the books. But a hearty band of union activists and public-interest lawyers keep crying foul. Finally, on Monday, they won their clearest victory yet in the drive to overturn the former governor’s anti-union legacy—which became the template for right-wing assaults on worker rights in other states and nationally.
In a ruling that sent joyous shock waves through labor circles in Wisconsin and across the country, Dane County Judge Jacob Frost restored collective bargaining rights for public employees. Frost’s sweeping decision struck down key sections of Act 10, with an explanation that they violated the Wisconsin Constitution’s equal protection clause. Specifically, Judge Frost determined that Walker had unreasonably and unconstitutionally created a preference for unions representing police and firefighters, which in some cases had supported his campaigns, while effectively eliminating those rights for unions representing teachers and other public employees.
The judge determined that Act 10 was ”irrational and violates the right to equal protection of the laws.” In so doing, Judge Frost —who, in an initial ruling in July, had raised constitutional concerns about Walker’s law—rejected a demand from Walker’s Republican legislative allies for a narrow ruling that would respond to only some aspects of the measure’s obvious lawlessness.
“I cannot solve Act 10’s constitutional problems by striking the definition of ‘public safety employee,’ leaving the term undefined and leaving the remainder of the law in place,” wrote Judge Frost in Monday’s ruling. “Act 10, as written by the Legislature, specifically and narrowly defines ‘public safety employee.’ It is that definition which is unconstitutional. The Legislature cites no precedent for this bold argument that I should simply strike the unlawful definition but leave it to an agency and the courts to later define as they see fit. I am unaware of any such precedent.”
While Republican legislators and their allies will, undoubtedly, challenge the ruling, Walker and his fellow anti-labor Republicans no longer have a Supreme Court that will do their bidding. In recent elections for seats on the court, voters have established a progressive majority that respects the Wisconsin Constitution and the rule of law. The court’s 4–3 new majority will be tested in an election for an open seat in April of 2025, but progressives have become quite skilled at winning judicial contests—with an assist from a state Democratic Party that is led by Ben Wikler, a highly regarded electoral strategist who recently launched a bid for chair of the Democratic National Committee.
What that means is that, while the immediate and longer-term wrangling over labor rights in Wisconsin will continue, there is a very good chance that Judge Frost’s ruling will be upheld (perhaps in short order, if the court moves quickly to take up the case)—thus unraveling Walker’s anti-union legacy and renewing Wisconsin’s historic commitment to the right of workers to organize and collectively bargain. “We’re confident that, in the end, the rights of all Wisconsin public sector employees will be restored,” declared Betsy Ramsdale, a school teacher and union activist from the central Wisconsin city of Beaver Dam, who has been involved in the legal fight to overturn Act 10.
Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Stephanie Bloomingdale announced, ”Nearly 14 years after Scott Walker, in his own words, ‘dropped the bomb’ on Wisconsin public employees, Wisconsin workers can celebrate as the judicial branch restores collective bargaining rights to public employees in Wisconsin. Declaring Wisconsin’s union-busting Act 10 unconstitutional and void, over 60 sections of the 2011 anti-union law have now been struck down.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/scott-walker-union-law-ruling/
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