WI Attorney General To Appeal Ruling Against Anti-Union Law

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen (R)
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Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen (R) has quickly announced that the state will be appealing today’s ruling from a Dane County judge, blocking the implementation of Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) controversial anti-public employee union law on procedural grounds.

As WisPolitics reports:

In a statement on the state’s planned appeal, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen says the Legislature and guv, “not a single Dane County Circuit Court Judge, are responsible for the enactment of laws.”

Van Hollen also added: “No matter whether individual citizens agree with the substance of the bill or the manner in which it was enacted, I would hope all see the value in ensuring this matter be given the opportunity to work its way expeditiously through the judicial process.”

This sort of language, and the argument that a single judge in one jurisdiction should not be able to override the will of the whole legislative and executive branches, might seem very familiar to people — it’s quite similar to what we’ve heard in the national litigation on health care reform, only with the shoe on the other partisan foot.

On the other hand, when U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson in Florida declared that health care reform was unconstitutional, Van Hollen had a somewhat different take on things:

“Judge Vinson declared the health care law void and stated in his decision that a declaratory judgment is the functional equivalent of an injunction,” Hollen says in a statement. “This means that, for Wisconsin, the federal health care law is dead — unless and until it is revived by an appellate court.”

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