Lone Candle

“The state’s legislature is so aggressively gerrymandered that it is likely impossible for Republicans to lose control of it in an election. In 2018, for example, Democratic state assembly candidates received 54 percent of the popular vote in Wisconsin, but Republicans still won 63 of the assembly’s 99 seats.

There is, however, a light at the end of this tunnel both for small-d democrats and for large-D Democrats in the notoriously contentious swing state. Last April, Justice Janet Protasiewicz won a landslide election victory over a former, very conservative state justice. She took her seat at the beginning of August, giving Democrats a 4-3 majority on the state supreme court. (Technically, supreme court races in Wisconsin are nonpartisan, but every recent race has pitted a liberal supported by Democrats against a conservative supported by Republicans.)

Litigants challenging the gerrymandered state legislature filed a lawsuit, known as Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the very next day.

A quirk in the state constitution, however, may allow Wisconsin’s gerrymandered legislature to strip Protasiewicz of her ability to decide cases, and to do so indefinitely. That would leave the state supreme court evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and thus unable (or, at least, unwilling) to strike down the state’s gerrymander.
According to the New York Times, “Republicans in Wisconsin are coalescing around the prospect of impeaching” Protasiewicz. If the state assembly moved forward with impeachment, and then the gerrymandered state Senate convicted her, that wouldn’t actually be that big of a deal. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers could immediately appoint a replacement justice, who would then provide the fourth vote to strike down the gerrymandered maps.

But the state constitution also provides that “no judicial officer shall exercise [her] office, after [s]he shall have been impeached, until [her] acquittal.” So the state assembly could conceivably impeach Protasiewicz, and then the state senate could delay her trial forever — effectively creating a vacancy on the court that could last for a very long time.

There’s a very strong argument that this impeachment plan violates the First Amendment. So, if Republicans actually move forward with this plan, Protasiewicz or some other interested party would likely file a federal lawsuit seeking to restore her to office. But, even if that lawsuit succeeds, that could take years.

And there’s no guarantee that the federal judiciary, and especially a US Supreme Court with six GOP-appointed justices, would honor past precedents indicating that Protasiewicz cannot be suspended from her office. Indeed, one member of the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito, has already signaled that he will intervene to ensure that Republicans keep their stranglehold on the state legislature.”

…

“if Protasiewicz’s court also is not allowed to strike down these gerrymanders, the people of Wisconsin will be left with no lawful recourse whatsoever against permanent Republican control of their state legislature.”

https://www.vox.com/scotus/23861973/wisconsin-gerrymander-republican-impeachment-justice-protasiewicz-supreme-court