A Judge in Wisconsin Just Buried the Last of Scott Walker’s Wing-Nut Legacy

Thirteen years ago, Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, managed to get his pet legislature to pass the infamous Act 10, which stripped collective-bargaining rights from the state’s public employees. This prompted weeks of massive demonstrations outside the state capitol in Madison, along with an unsuccessful attempt to recall the governor, and it briefly made a star out of the charisma-deprived Walker to the money power. The burst of fame resulted in Walker’s 2016 presidential campaign, which lasted approximately 11 seconds. Walker subsequently faded into the distant quadrants of the Wing-Nut Welfare universe. This week, a judge in Dane County buried the last of his legacy. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The effort to overturn Act 10 began in November 2023 when several unions representing public employees filed the lawsuit, citing a “dire situation” in workplaces with issues including low pay, staffing shortages and poor working conditions. Frost agreed. He said he couldn’t sever Act 10’s definition of “public safety employee,” which he said is “irrational and violates the right to equal protection of the laws,” and also keep the rest of Act 10 intact. “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 Frost in Monday’s ruling.

This always was the law’s great flaw, and it results from the fact that Walker didn’t have the cojones to include Wisconsin’s police and fire departments in his union busting and exempted those politically powerful unions from Act 10’s provisions.

Frost added that “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 (…).” In the earlier ruling on the motion to dismiss the case, Frost pointed out the law treats different groups of public safety employees differently.

“Nobody could provide this Court an explanation that reasonably showed why municipal police and fire and State Troopers are considered public safety employees, but Capitol Police, UW Police and conservation wardens, who have the same authority and do the same work, are not,” Frost said. In his latest ruling, he said the courts cannot decide how the Legislature meant to define a public safety employee in Act 10. The courts, he said, “cannot decide who should be included or excluded, absent guidance from the Legislature.”

Undoubtedly, the courts have not seen the last of this. (Once again, the election that flipped the majority of the state supreme court a couple years ago will play a critical role.) But this week’s ruling was the result of a long fight that certainly was worth making. In a sense, those people never left the capitol lawn.