Wisconsin Supreme Kangaroo Court Rules In Favor Of Pandemic

The Wisconsin State Supreme Kangaroo Court has decided, in a 4-3 ruling that Wisconsin's Safer at Home order was illegal and immediately abolished the order. The decision is, of course, disappointing but not surprising, since many of the judges had obviously decided the ruling even before they heard the case.

Among the pro-pandemic judges was Rebecca Bradley, who compared the order to Japanese internment camps during WWII and Dan Kelly, the Scott Walker appointee, who is obviously still better in getting his ass handed to him in last month's election.

The rationale that the kangaroos used to support their decision made it obvious that this whole thing was nothing more than another power grab by the Republicans and their special interest masters:

In the majority opinion, Roggensack determined Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm should have issued regulations through a process known as rulemaking, which gives lawmakers veto power over agency policies.

Without legislative review, “an unelected official could create law applicable to all people during the course of COVID-19 and subject people to imprisonment when they disobeyed her order,” the majority wrote.

The problem with their reasoning is that state law clearly spells out that the governor's administration's authority to issue the order that it did.

Surprisingly, another one of Walker's appointees actually had a rare moment of lucidity:

Hagedorn, who worked as chief legal counsel for former GOP Gov. Scott Walker, wrote in another dissent that the court should not be a referee between the warring parties controlling the other two branches of state government.

"We are a court of law. We are not here to do freewheeling constitutional theory. We are not here to step in and referee every intractable political stalemate," Hagedorn wrote."In striking down most of (the order), this court has strayed from its charge and turned this case into something quite different than the case brought to us.

"To make matters worse, it has failed to provide almost any guidance for what the relevant laws mean, and how our state is to govern through this crisis moving forward. The legislature may have buyer's remorse for the breadth of discretion it gave to (the Department of Health Services). But those are the laws it drafted; we must read them faithfully whether we like them or not," he said.

But here's the kicker - the Republicans had no plan of their own to deal with the pandemic. They belatedly realized this and had asked the court to order a six-day stay so that they could cobble something together but they were denied. Now they are begging Evers to give them a plan for them to approve.

Meanwhile, the state has been thrown into a pandemic pandemonium. With no statewide order in place, many counties and cities have quickly rigged up their own versions of stay at home. But these are different from county to county and even from city to city. Some places already had their orders in place so nothing changed. Many others did not.

Thus one can expect that the state will become one giant COVID-19 hot spot as bars across the state opened up within an hour of the ruling.

Laughingly, Robin "Full PPEs" Vos made this statement about the ruling:

“Republicans believe business owners can safely reopen using the guidelines provided
by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. We urge our fellow small
business owners to utilize the suggestions as a safe and effective way to open up our
state.

“Wisconsin now joins multiple states that don't have extensive ‘stay at home orders’ but
can continue to follow good practices of social distancing, hand washing, hand sanitizer
usage and telecommuting. This order does not promote people to act in a way that they
believe endangers their health.

Reality did not support this inanity:

I have to wonder how many of these bars are having Corona specials, since that is what they are mostly serving up.

The really ironic part is that the Republicans, on behalf of their Big Business masters, think that they have won. But it will be a Pyrrhic victory at best. Sick and/or dying workers aren't very productive and sick and/or dying consumers don't buy a lot of things.