MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The conservative chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court docket accused her liberal colleagues of a “uncooked train of overreaching energy” after they flexed their new majority Wednesday and fired the director of the state’s court docket system.
The 4 liberal justices, on simply their second day as a majority on the court docket after 15 years below conservative management, voted to fireside Randy Koschnick. Koschnick held the job for six years after serving for 18 years as a decide and operating unsuccessfully as a conservative in 2009 towards then-Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, a liberal.
“To say that I’m dissatisfied in my colleagues is an understatement,” Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, now a member of the three-justice conservative minority, mentioned in a prolonged assertion after Koschnick was fired.
Ziegler mentioned the transfer undermined her authority as chief justice. She known as it unauthorized, procedurally and legally flawed, and reckless. However she mentioned she wouldn’t try to cease it out of worry that different court docket staff might be equally fired.
“My colleagues’ unprecedented harmful conduct is the uncooked train of overreaching energy,” she mentioned. “It’s shameful. I worry that is solely the start.”
Fellow conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley blasted the transfer in a social media put up, saying, “Political purges of court docket staff are past the pale.”
Koschnick known as the transfer “apparently political.”
“I believe that portends dangerous issues for the court docket’s determination making going ahead,” he mentioned.
The court docket introduced Wednesday night that Milwaukee County Circuit Court docket Choose Audrey Skwierawski will function the interim director of state courts starting Thursday. Skwierawski will take a go away from her place on the circuit court docket, the place she has served since her appointment by former Gov. Scott Walker in 2018, it mentioned.
The justices who voted to fireside Koschnick didn’t reply to a request for remark left with the court docket’s spokesperson.
Ziegler famous that when conservatives took management of the court docket in 2008, they didn’t act to fireside the director of state courts at the moment, John Voelker. He remained within the place for six extra years earlier than resigning.
Ziegler praised Koschnick for his 18 years as a decide and his efforts as director of the state court docket system, a job that features hiring court docket personnel and sustaining the statewide laptop system for courts. She additionally applauded him for addressing the psychological well being wants of individuals within the court docket system, tackling a court docket reporter scarcity and retaining courts working in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Koschnick mentioned he might have accepted his firing — and ensured a smoother transition together with his successor — if the justices had waited to do it at a deliberate administrative assembly subsequent month. As an alternative, he mentioned, court docket employees are boxing up his private belongings whereas he’s in New York at a judicial convention.
“It creates a extremely unstable office,” he mentioned.