The Wisconsin Supreme Court today took over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s request to be removed from the state’s presidential ballot.
With thousands of ballots already in voters’ hands, the court wrote in the order that it “will endeavor to issue a written decision as expeditiously as possible.”
The state Department of Justice, representing the Wisconsin Elections Commission, yesterday asked the justices to take over the case.
That petition to bypass came after Kennedy went to the conservative 2nd District Court of Appeals seeking to overturn a Dane County judge’s ruling. The Dane County ruling denied his request seeking to require the Elections Commission to leave him off the ballot and to prevent the mailing of absentee ballots until a ruling was issued on the merits of the case.
Today’s ruling comes as the 2nd District Court of Appeals had set deadlines for the final briefs before it weighed in. The court wrote in its order that the expedited briefing schedule established by the appeals court will continue to apply.
Conservative Justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler dissented on procedural grounds. Typically, the court rejects petitions to bypass when the respondent has not yet filed a reply brief in the case. The Department of Justice yesterday asked the court to grant the petition to bypass even though its response to Kennedy wasn’t due in the 2nd District until this morning.
Bradley wrote her colleagues aren’t consistent in how they view premature petitions to bypass.
“The majority’s arbitrariness in following its professed procedure in one case while discarding it in another sends a message to litigants that judicial process will be invoked or ignored based on the majority’s desired outcome in a politically-charged case,” she wrote.
