A Wisconsin circuit court judge has struck down parts of the law that led to nationwide protests and a weeks-long occupation of the State Capitol in Madison last year, and an unsuccessful recall election of Gov. Scott Walker earlier this year.
The law stripped public employees of all meaningful collective bargaining rights, but arguments in lawsuits filed by two public employee unions persuaded Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colás that it violates the Wisconsin Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.
In his Sept. 14 ruling, Colás wrote that the law imposes “significant and burdensome restrictions on employees who choose to associate in a labor organization,” and thus violates their constitutional rights to free speech, freedom of association, and right to equal treatment under the law.
The suit was filed by Laborers Local 61, which represents public employees at the City of Milwaukee, and the Madison Teachers Inc. of the Madison Metropolitan School District teachers union. Because state employees were not a party to the lawsuit, the ruling only affects municipal and school district employees.
Under the law, union-represented employees are barred from receiving wage increases greater than the cost of living, but nothing prevents government managers from giving raises greater than that to nonunion employees. The law prohibits employer collection of union dues for most public employees, but not public safety and transit unions. The law also violates the Wisconsin Constitution’s Home Rule Amendment, under which municipalities may establish their own practices, and it runs afoul of the state constitution’s prohibition against impairment of contracts.
Wisconsin’s Republican attorney general said the ruling will be appealed. Likely it will end up before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That body, majority-Republican, already restored the law once before in a court case last year on separate grounds, after a different circuit court judge found it had passed in violation of Wisconsin legislative rules.
