Wisconsin Republican Assembly Leader Robin Vos is asking former state Supreme Court justices to examine the criteria for impeaching justices — it's the party's latest move against liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz.
The feud between GOP leaders in Wisconsin and Protasiewicz began when she joined the high court on Aug. 1 and flipped the majority liberal for the first time in 15 years. Most recently, Republicans have targeted Protasiewicz for her comments about redistricting and almost $10 million received from the state Democratic Party in donations.
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Vos announced on Wednesday that he would be creating an investigative panel comprising three former state Supreme Court justices who will look at the rules for impeachment. The justices will remain anonymous until the work is complete, Vos told the Associated Press.
However, he said former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who was investigating the 2020 election but was later fired, will not be on the panel. Former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly told the Associated Press he was not on the panel either.
Vos added that the three justices on the panel will not be paid and that their work should be complete in the "next few weeks."
Impeachment of justices in Wisconsin is permitted under state law for corrupt conduct in the office or the commission of a crime. It takes a simple majority in the state Assembly to impeach and a two-thirds majority in the state Senate to convict.
Wisconsin has a divided trifecta, which means Republicans hold control of the legislature while Democrats control the governor's office. The GOP holds a 64-35 majority in the Assembly and a 22-11 majority in the Senate, exactly a two-thirds majority.
Vos's announcement comes a day after Assembly Republicans introduced a bill that would have new maps drawn by nonpartisan legislative staff and approved by the legislature in 2024. The GOP's current majorities have been largely built on the maps drawn in 2011 that were challenged as some of the most gerrymandered in the country but upheld by the state's Supreme Court when it leaned conservative.
At the same time, Republicans have called on Protasiewicz to recuse herself from a pair of Democratic-backed redistricting lawsuits that are challenging GOP-drawn maps, arguing that she cannot judge the cases fairly. She had called the current maps "unfair" and "rigged" during her campaign, according to the Associated Press.
Protasiewicz has not made a decision on whether to recuse herself from the redistricting cases. However, she did recuse herself from a case before the Supreme Court looking to block attempts by the legislature to impeach her.
Justices and judicial candidates are prohibited from making promises or commitments to ruling a certain way on any issue, according to Wisconsin's judicial code, a rule that Protasiewicz adhered to during her campaign. A Wisconsin commission that investigates complaints against judges dismissed those related to her redistricting comments last week.
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Wisconsin Democrats launched a $4 million defense effort on Sept. 7 to target Republican lawmakers who are pressuring Protasiewicz to recuse herself from the redistricting lawsuits and threatening impeachment if she does not do so.
The Assembly Democratic Caucus and the Senate Democratic Caucus have said they’ll do everything in their “power to prevent this egregious effort to undermine our democracy.”