Wisconsin Supreme Court votes to keep more meetings behind closed doors

MADISON - The Wisconsin Supreme Court voted Wednesday to keep more of its deliberations behind closed doors. 

The decision — on a 5-2 vote — came amid acrimony that has come to mark the court in recent years.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, like other courts, has always conducted its arguments on cases in public and its deliberations about those cases behind closed doors.

But in 1999, the court became one of the first state high courts — if not the first — to hold its administrative meetings before the public. At the meetings, shown live in recent years on the WisconsinEye Public Affairs Network, the justices discussed issues both meaty and mundane, many of them pertaining to court policies.

That began to change five years ago, when the court voted to curtail the number of meetings it held publicly. Under that policy, deliberations have been held publicly only when the court has discussed proposed changes to its formal rules.

For instance, the justices in April debated in public whether they should tighten court rules that dictate when judges must step aside from cases involving people or groups who spent money in their elections. The court rejected the rule changes, 5-2.

The same majority voted Thursday to stop holding such discussions in public. As such, when the court next takes up its ethics policies, it will do so behind closed doors.

Voting to end having the meetings held in public were the court's conservatives: Chief Justice Patience Roggensack and Justices Rebecca Bradley, Michael Gableman, Daniel Kelly and Annette Ziegler.

Liberal Justices Shirley Abrahamson and Ann Walsh Bradley voted against the measure. (The Bradleys are not related.)

At the meeting, Gableman said it was time to end the experiment of holding meetings in public.

“It is time for us to return to how a court actually operates,” said Gableman, who announced last week he would not seek a second 10-year term next year.

He read from a 1999 memo on holding meetings in public. Ann Bradley asked where he got the memo, stood up and reached over to try to look at the memo Gableman held.

The gesture appeared minor, but Gableman spoke about it in strong terms, making a veiled reference to a 2011 incident in which then-Justice David Prosser put his hands on Bradley’s neck during an argument.

“Ann, I take great exception to you attempting to reach over and physically come over to me, something which you complained about when another justice did that to you," Gableman said. "I am appalled by your conduct.”

Responded Ann Bradley: “I hope this was on WisconsinEye so people can see what happened.” (It was.)

Roggensack then moved to conduct the vote — one of the last the court is to hold in public.

“I think everybody’s got their oar in the water and we’re not making progress in any way that’s judicial,” Roggensack said just before the vote.