MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Four of the state Supreme Court’s seven justices engaged in a limited boycott this week to protest the way Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson wanted to take up a specific issue, the latest sign of dissension in what has become a deeply fractured court.
The issue involved the court’s decision in January to discuss much of its work behind closed doors.
The decision reversed a policy instituted in 1999 in which the court agreed to take up the bulk of its administrative matters in public.
Abrahamson wanted to write a dissent to the January decision, and she contended that the court needed to vote publicly on it Wednesday, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report.
But after a meeting earlier that morning on other matters, the court’s four conservative-leaning justices failed to return in the afternoon to take up the final rule change that would close future meetings.
Abrahamson said she had received an email from Justice Patience Roggensack saying she would not attend the afternoon meeting as long as an “improper item” remained on the agenda.
Abrahamson said she believed the matter had to be discussed publicly until it was finalized.
She instructed a Supreme Court marshal to ask the majority justices to cast their votes from their chambers.
Fifteen minutes later the marshal reported the four had voted to finalize the new policy.
The three who dissented on the rule were Abrahamson and Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and N. Patrick Crooks.
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