Wisconsin GOP isn’t the first to threaten their state Supreme Court with impeachment

Created
Sun, 24/09/2023 - 04:00
Updated
Sun, 24/09/2023 - 04:00
I’m sure you’ve read all about the potential impeachment of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz in Wisconsin despite her recent massive electoral win because of her promise to revisit the gerrymander laws in the state which have given Republicans a huge majority.I had not heard that there was a precedent for this back in 2018. Bolts magazine has the story: Margaret Workman is watching Wisconsin Republicans threaten Justice Janet Protasiewicz with impeachment from several states away. But she can relate to Protasiewicz like very few can.  Workman sat on West Virginia’s supreme court in 2018—one of the three Democratic justices in the court’s majority—when Republican lawmakers decided to impeach that entire court. The GOP had flipped the legislature in 2014 for the first time in decades, and it had seized the governorship in 2017; only the supreme court stood in the way of one-party rule in the state.  “All of a sudden, we had this right-wing legislature wanting to impeach everybody,” she recalls, “and they wanted in my opinion to get rid of us so they could put their own.” West Virginia’s GOP in 2018 similarly tested the bounds of their power once they had the votes. “Impeaching the entire court was entirely political,” says Robert Bastress, professor at the West Virginia College of Law, “it was motivated by Republicans who had just recently taken over the legislature, and they were flexing their muscle.”  […] The overhaul of West Virginia’s supreme court dates back to 2018, when Chief Justice Allen Loughry, a Republican, was federally indicted on…