This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Wisconsin GOP’s ostensible reason for impeaching Protasiewicz is that, as a candidate for her current office, the justice campaigned against the state’s gerrymandered maps — calling them “rigged.” Republicans claim this means she impermissibly prejudged the Clarke case and must recuse from it.
But there is a US Supreme Court case — Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002) —that is almost directly on point here, holding that candidates for judicial office have a First Amendment right to publicly state their positions on contentious legal issues while they are campaigning for election.
Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in Republican Party persuasively lays out why it makes no sense to strip judicial candidates of their free speech rights in the midst of an election campaign.
The Court’s decision in Republican Party should prohibit the Wisconsin GOP from impeaching Protasiewicz because she expressed a view on a contentious legal issue while she was a candidate for judicial office.
Last December, during oral arguments in Moore v. Harper, Alito asked whether “it furthers democracy to transfer the political controversy about districting from the legislature to elected supreme courts where the candidates are permitted by state law to campaign on the issue of districting?” So Alito seemed to suggest that it would be improper for a state supreme court to rule in a gerrymandering case if its members are even allowed to campaign on this issue.
So, if Protasiewicz’s court also is not allowed to strike down these gerrymanders, the people of Wisconsin will be left with no lawful recourse whatsoever against permanent Republican control of their state legislature.
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