Police sue over new residency rule

Two Milwaukee police officers and their union have sued the city over its new residency rule, which says employees must live within 15 miles of Milwaukee or be fired.

The problem, the lawsuit contends, is that at least seven police officers moved farther away during a period when the city' s original residency rule, undone by the state Legislature in 2013, was the subject of heated litigation.

The suit asks that a court declare Milwaukee's new residency rule, when applied retroactively, violates those officers' constitutional rights to due process, and award the plaintiffs unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

For decades, all city employees, with few exceptions, had to live within Milwaukee boundaries. In 2013, the state Legislature passed a law that undid all such strict residency requirements but did allow for cities to require certain employees, including police and firefighters, to live within 15 miles of city limits. Milwaukee did not adopt a new rule but instead continued to enforce its longtime rule of residency within city boundaries.

The police union sued. One judge agreed the city requirement had been eliminated by the state law, but the Court of Appeals reversed and sided with the city's right to make employees live in the city.

But ultimately, in June, the state Supreme Court sided with the Legislature and the police that the state law blocked the city's historic residency requirements.

Only in July, in light of that court ruling, did the city adopt a new rule under the state law setting the 15-mile limit for police and firefighters.

According to the lawsuit, during the roughly three years between the effective date of the state law and the recent Supreme Court ruling, many officers moved out of the city. At the same time, the suit states, the Police Department hired more than 100 new officers, many of whom live outside the city limits.

The new city ordinance doesn't make exceptions for officers hired before the state law and who have since moved more than 15 miles away. It also mandates that any officer or firefighter residing outside the new limit be fired.

Plaintiffs in the case include the Milwaukee Police Association; its president, Detective Michael Crivello; and Officer Joseph A. Anderer.

In its answer to the complaint, the city denies that any officer has been deprived of property and that the city did not have to adopt the new 15 miles away rule earlier because it believed, until the Supreme Court ruling, that the city's original, stricter requirement was lawful.

It also states that any officers who moved away during the three-year period of litigation were well aware that they would have to re-establish residency in Milwaukee if the city prevailed in court.

This week, the city moved to have the case transferred from circuit court, where it was first filed earlier in the month, to U.S. District Court.