Legal News

Wisconsin Judges Calls Halt to Union Law

By Nathan Koppel

Unions continue to be a prime target of cost-cutting lawmakers around the country, as the Ohio legislature Wednesday voted to severely limit the collective bargaining rights of 350,000 public workers in the state, AP reports.

In Nebraska, legislators this week also introduced legislation that would weaken the bargaining rights of public employee unions, the Omaha World-Herald reports.

But in Wisconsin, state judge Maryann Sumi has put the state’s new landmark union law temporarily on ice.

The judge today ruled that the law is not in effect, contravening Republican leaders in the state who had said the law was effective as of last week, according to the AP.

The Wisconsin law requires public workers to chip in more for their health care and pensions and it limits their collective bargaining rights.  The state’s Department of Administration had begun preparations to start taking extra deductions out of workers’ paychecks when the judge intervened, according to AP.

A Democratic district attorney in Wisconsin has filed suit challenging the new law on the grounds that Republican legislators violated the state's open meeting laws when they moved the new law through committee.

Officials in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s administration told AP that the governor plans to comply with Sumi’s ruling.

But a spokesman for Republican Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald said that the judge had infringed on the Legislature’s prerogative and had violated the separation of powers doctrine, according to AP.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 31, 2011 (boomark / email).