Wisconsin Right to Life, along with several other plaintiffs, filed suit on Friday seeking to enjoin Wisconsin's judicial canons that forbid state court judicial candidates from responding to candidate questionnaires asking their views on legal issues.
The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin in Madison. The case was brought against members of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission and the Director of Wisconsin's Office of Lawyer Regulation, the entities charged with disciplining judges and lawyers who violate the judicial canons of Wisconsin and the state's Rules of Professional Conduct.
Wisconsin Right to Life sent a statewide questionnaire to judicial candidates running in the 2006 election asking that the candidates and judges state their views on policies and court decisions concerning abortion and other related issues. All but one candidate declined to answer, stating that several Wisconsin canons barred them from doing so. Because so many judicial candidates declined to answer, Wisconsin Right to Life decided not to publish the responses of the candidate who responded, hoping to prevent exposing that judicial candidate to potential recusal requests because of his answers.
The U. S. Supreme Court has held unconstitutional a Minnesota rule that prohibited judicial candidates from "announc[ing] their views on disputed legal or political issues." But the Wisconsin canons forbid judicial candidates from pledging or promising and from committing to an issues that might come before them as a judge. The Wisconsin canons also require judges to recuse themselves on cases that involve issues on which they have appeared to commit themselves. These canons have prevented judicial candidates from announcing their opinions.
According to James Bopp, Jr., lead counsel for the plaintiffs, the challenged Wisconsin canons "are contrary to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, which clearly state that judicial candidates have a right to respond to surveys like this and that voters have a right to hear what they have to say." Bopp, who successfully argued the case challenging the Minnesota judicial rule struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White,536 U.S.765 (2002), stated that the recusal requirement was being interpreted to suppress the same sort of free speech that Minnesota had tried to punish.
The case is Mark Duwe, et al v. Alexander, et al., 06-C-0766-S, and was assigned to District Court Judge John Shabaz. The complaint and memorandum supporting the motion for preliminary injunction are available in PDF format online at the James Madison Center's website www.jamesmadisoncenter.org under the "Judicial Accountability Project" link on Tuesday, January 2, 2007.
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