Gov. Evers Sues Republican Lawmakers
Suit comes after string of decisions have blocked UW pay raises, blocked new building code rules and halted conservation projects.
Gov. Tony Evers speaks before signing the 2023-2025 biennial budget Wednesday, July 5, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Gov. Tony Evers is suing Republican state lawmakers, claiming their votes to block pay raises for employees of the Universities of Wisconsin, conservation projects and updates to the state’s commercial building standards are unconstitutional.
In a statement Tuesday morning, Evers said Republicans are “unconstitutionally and unlawfully obstructing basic government functions” by blocking raises for around 35,000 UW System employees until state universities eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion staff and programs, known as DEI.
“When the Republicans decided that 35,000 people that work for the UW System shouldn’t get a raise without having any legislation, that that gives them that authority, that’s just bulls—,” Evers told reporters Tuesday.
Pay raises for employees of state universities were approved by Republicans and signed into law by Evers in July as part of the state’s 2023-2025 budget. On Oct. 17, the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employee Relations, co-chaired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, voted to block raises for UW workers. At the same time, the committee signed off on raises for other state employees.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, Evers called the vote “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“They went too far,” Evers said. “You know, it’s one thing to mess around with the decision that was made about purchasing land. But when we mess with people’s lives like that, that was that was the coup de grâce.”
Evers’ lawsuit comes just months after liberals took control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years, though Evers said that did not factor into his decision to file the case now.
In a written statement, Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman said the stakes for Wisconsin’s economic future rely on universities’ ability to develop talent and “the less we are subject to ongoing political disputes, the better we can do our job.”
“As I have said from the beginning, it was unprecedented to withhold pay from our employees as part of a political disagreement between two separate branches of government,” Rothman said. “I am deeply troubled by our faculty and staff being stuck in the middle of this dispute. While it is not our lawsuit, it’s time for this whole ordeal that is blocking pay for our employees to come to an end.”
The lawsuit, filed by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul on behalf of Evers, along with a host of state agencies and boards, also focuses on GOP actions to block 27 conservation projects funded through the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program. Evers’ lawsuit also argues Republicans overstepped their authority on administrative rules related to commercial building standards and ethics standards for social workers and counselors.
The case claims GOP lawmakers are violating the Wisconsin Constitution’s “well-defined separation of powers” by creating more and more “legislative vetoes” made by committees made up of a handful of legislators.
“The state Legislature has given legislative committees a veto over a wide range of executive branch activity, concentrating executive power in small subsets of the Legislature,” Kaul said. “In the case filed today, we argue that, as courts in other jurisdictions have, the Wisconsin Supreme Court should hold that legislative vetoes of executive branch acts are unconstitutional.”
Evers’ administration is petitioning the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take the case as an original action, effectively asking the court’s new liberal majority to bypass lower courts.
“Disputes concerning the proper separation of power among the branches of government have previously been the subject of original actions before the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” the statement said.
Spokespersons for Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Editors Note: Wisconsin Public Radio is a service of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This story will be updated.
You go Gov. Evers!
About time someone stood up to the nonsense Vos et.al continue to pull.
As an average citizen it feels great to know that someone is acting on ‘our’ behalf! And no, I do not now nor have I ever worked for the UW system.
These shenanigans by politicians have been increasing at a troubling rate in our state and the city of MKE.
Politicians from both sides have been burying legislation within the “budget” Acts for too long, and it’s becoming dysfunctional.
It feels like the WI Statutes are continually being modified… and I’m talking about the regular everyday sections of the Statutes, not just the esoteric wonky stuff.
And in MKE, the Code of Ordinances is starting to feel like a “choose your own adventure” book… aka, it is continually getting tweaked without any public input.
On both levels of government, these undercover changes are mostly related to the requests of campaign donors (aka “free speech”) and the changes typically are not in the best interest of the majority of citizens.
Politicians love “free speech”, it’s the only thing they all agree on.
An unrelated , but more troubling example is the Milw County Sheriff Dept’s current watered down “Use of Force” policy. The outside consultant they hired to draft it continues to make small changes in terminology… and reading it today it’s apparent that the Policy no longer exists to protect the safety of citizens. … because the public wasn’t paying attention to the incremental changes being slipped in on an ongoing basis vs a much more public “changing of the rules” type process.