Wisconsin
Judge finds GOP election investigator in contempt
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge on Friday found the investigator hired by Republicans to look into former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss in the battleground state in contempt because of how his office responded to open records requests related to the probe.
The ruling against the office led by Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who briefly worked for Trump, came after Gableman berated the judge and refused to answer any questions on the witness stand. Gableman had not wanted to testify, but Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington ordered him to appear.
Remington did not immediately announce a penalty in court on Friday, saying he would provide that in a written decision.
Gableman was hired a year ago by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, under pressure from Trump to investigate the former president’s loss to President Joe Biden by just under 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. The investigation has cost taxpayers about $900,000 so far.
Biden’s victory has survived two recounts, multiple lawsuits, a nonpartisan audit and a review by a conservative law firm. Only a couple of dozen people out of nearly 3.3 million voters have been charged with fraud, numbers on par with past elections.
Gableman has issued two interim reports, but his work has faced a barrage of bipartisan criticism and Vos put his work on hold this spring pending the outcome of lawsuits challenging his ability to subpoena elected officials and others who worked on elections.
American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group, filed three open records lawsuits against Gableman, Vos and the Wisconsin Assembly. The group has won a series of victories before Remington and another Dane County judge after Gableman and Vos failed to produce the requested records in a timely manner.
Gableman has argued that his staff member, Zakory Niemierowicz, was the legal custodian responsible for responding to American Oversight’s requests. Gableman’s attorneys had argued that because of that, Gableman’s testimony was not needed.
That prompted Remington on Wednesday to caution Niemierowicz that he may want to hire his own attorney if Gableman’s plan was to blame him for failing to comply with court orders.
An attorney for Gableman’s office tried to delay Friday’s hearing but Gableman was forced to take the stand. Gableman refused to answer questions from the attorney representing American Oversight and testily said Remington had “abandoned his role as a neutral magistrate and is acting as an advocate.”
Remington admonished Gableman and said he shouldn’t have to instruct the former state Supreme Court justice “on the behavior I expect of you as a witness on this stand.” Gableman then demanded a personal attorney and said he wouldn’t answer further questions.
“I’m not going to be railroaded,” he said.
Gableman has publicly released, and provided to American Oversight, hundreds of pages of documents related to the investigation. His attorneys have insisted that everything requested has been provided. Gableman has also said that he is exempt from retaining records and his office regularly destroys documents deemed “irrelevant or useless.”
That is contrary to an analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Council that found deleting such records, even by a state contractor such as Gableman, violates Wisconsin law. Gableman’s attorney, James Bopp, has argued in court filings that the record retention law does not pertain to contractors.
Remington in April, and Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn in May, both ordered Gableman to stop deleting records that may be responsive to American’s Oversight’s requests.
North Carolina
Judge: State’s health plan must cover transgender treatments
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina state employee health plan unlawfully discriminates by excluding treatments for transgender people by refusing to pay for hormone therapy and surgeries, as it once did briefly, a federal judge ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs sided with several transgender people or their parents in declaring the refusal of coverage for treatments linked to gender confirmation violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act on the basis of sex.
Biggs ordered that the State Health Plan resume offering “medically necessary services for the treatment of gender dysphoria,” which the plan’s board of trustees provided in 2017 but did not continue afterward. Monetary damages will be considered in a trial set to begin next month, her order said. Friday’s ruling considered competing motions and experts.
“After years of fighting for fair treatment, finally having a court decide that these healthcare exclusions are wrong is vindicating,” North Carolina State University professor Julia McKeown, one of the plaintiffs in a 2019 lawsuit, said in a news release from Lambda Legal, which provided representation. “As government employees, all we want is equal access to healthcare, but we were denied just because we are transgender.”
The State Health Plan, which is overseen by Treasurer Dale Folwell’s office, provides medical coverage for nearly 750,000 teachers, other employees, retirees and their dependents. Folwell, who took office in early 2017, was sued, along with the health plan, its top executive and other government entities.
While the state’s treasurer office was still reviewing the ruling late Friday, Folwell said in an interview that the board of trustees has had the ability to set benefits for several decades.
Folwell said he had hoped that before Biggs ruled she “would trust the people of North Carolina to have a jury trial on whether taxpayers should be paying for sexual transition operations.” Plan revenue includes state funds and premiums.
Biggs wrote that the plaintiffs’ doctors and experts, medical associations and the plan’s third-party administrators agreed that such treatments “can be medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria in some cases.”
“Defendants’ belief that gender-affirming care is ineffective and unnecessary is simply not supported by the record,” she added.
When agreeing to cover the medically necessary services for 2017, the plan’s board estimated the annual cost for such coverage would be several hundred thousand dollars, according to the order. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had finalized in 2016 a regulation prohibiting coverage exclusions related to gender transition. Biggs didn’t rule Friday on whether the plan’s actions violated the 2010 federal health care law, as the plaintiffs alleged.
