Wisconsin Supreme Court to Rule Thursday on Union Law, Voter ID
The Wisconsin Supreme Court Thursday is expected to issue three historic rulings affecting union bargaining, election law and same-sex couples.
Set for release this morning are long-awaited opinions on whether Gov. Scott Walker’s labor law is constitutional, whether voters can be made to show photo IDs and whether the state can run a registry for same-sex partners.
Court watchers have said that the simultaneous release of the three major decisions is unlike anything in living memory and that the late release suggests that on at least one case there’s a divided court in which some justices are writing either dissenting or concurring opinions.
The rulings, coming out just as this year’s midterm elections heat up, are fraught with political implications. As governor, Walker, a Republican, is one of the official defendants in all of the cases. His re-election challenger, Democrat Mary Burke, serves on the Madison School Board, the employer of the teachers suing the state in the labor case. By its very nature, the issue of voter ID can influence elections.