The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a law passed by state Republicans that weakened the Wisconsin attorney general’s office.
In a 7-0 decision, the court sided with Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul that requiring the state attorney general to get permission from a Republican-controlled legislative committee to settle certain civil lawsuits was unconstitutional. They also ruled the law violated the separation of powers clause.
The state Supreme Court said the state legislature can not “assume for itself the power to execute a law it wrote.”
The case stems from when the Republican-controlled Wisconsin state legislature convened a session in December 2018 after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Kaul defeated Republican incumbents, flipping the executive branch of the state.
The law, which weakened the attorney general’s authority, was signed by then-Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) before he left office. It required the state’s GOP-controlled legislative budget committee to sign off on cases involving the environment, consumer protection, and the governor’s office and executive branch.
After the law was passed, the state saw a backlog of unresolved lawsuits as Kaul and the Republican lawmakers were at frequent odds over how to move forward with the suits.
Kaul had argued that being required to seek approval for those lawsuit settlements violated the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the law, but left an avenue open for further challenges.
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Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative on the court who wrote the ruling, said there was no constitutional justification for requiring the legislature’s budget committee to approve court settlements.
“Enforcing the law is a task vested in the executive branch,” he wrote, noting the legislature “failed to demonstrate that these types of cases implicate an institutional interest granting the legislature a seat at the table.”