Democratic state senators left Wisconsin for
three weeks. This infuriated Senate Majority
Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who issued a memo
announcing that arrest warrants would be
issued for the missing senators.
Pines and colleague Susan Crawford
immediately sent a press release to
every media outlet in the state saying
the Senate had no authority to have the
Democrats arrested.
“We got it out within the same news
cycle as the majority leader’s, quote-
unquote, warrant,” recalls Pines. “Our
memo went viral on the Internet and was
downloaded thousands and thousands of
times. It was amazing.”
In the end, Republicans passed Act
10 without their missing colleagues
at a hastily called session. Too hastily,
according to Judge Maryann Sumi. She
issued a stay, saying the bill had been
passed without the required 24 hours’
public notice, in violation of the state’s
open meetings law. When Republicans
vowed to enforce it anyway, Sumi
threatened legal sanctions. But in June,
the state Supreme Court overturned
Sumi’s ruling.
Though the unions lost the battle, the
war was just beginning. Act 10 has been
surrounded by a flurry of lawsuits, and the
CWPB team has been in the thick of it.
“Starting in March, it’s been a drop-
everything process to be involved with all
this,” notes Pines. “There are still open
questions about the manner in which
[Act 10] was adopted, relating to rules
and procedures that have nothing to do
with the open meetings law. Then there
is a serious question about whether or
not the bill is constitutional under the
U.S. Constitution and also under the
Wisconsin Constitution.”
Pines and Packard don’t want to
tip their hand, but they promise more
litigation—not only related to Act 10,
but also to the state’s new voter ID bill,
which Pines pronounces “the worst in
the nation.” The Republican-controlled
state Legislature enacted the law—which
requires a photo ID to vote; if one doesn’t
have a driver’s license, it requires a birth
certificate or passport to get a free state
ID—maintaining it was needed to prevent
voter fraud.
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Still, notes Pines, “This is not like China
or a variety of Latin American countries
or other countries where union members
are imprisoned or murdered. That used
to happen in America, and a lot of people
forget that, that union members were
murdered and they were suppressed
legally through injunctions and so forth.
That doesn’t happen now, and I don’t
expect it to happen again, and that gives
unions the opportunity to use different
approaches.
“Ultimately there has to be some
equilibrium with employers,” Pines
continues. “It can’t just be that CEOs get to
call all the shots in America.”
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Gregory F. Rothstein
HAYES & ROTHSTEIN, S. C.
