On March 31, U.S. District Court Judge William M. Conley upheld Wisconsin’s public funding law for candidates for State Supreme Court Justice. Here is the 39-page opinion. The case is Wisconsin Right to Life PAC v Brennan, 09-cv-764, western district. Wisconsin holds non-partisan elections for State Supreme Court Justice in April of odd years. A fierce contest is being held next week, between incumbent Justice David Prosser and challenger (and Assistant Attorney General) Joanne Kloppenburg.

The Wisconsin law provides for extra public funding for publicly-funded candidates, if outside groups spend a great deal of money expressly advocating his or her defeat. The lawsuit challenged this extra public funding, not the public funding program itself. The judge upheld the extra public funding, because he found that the need to insure that judicial elections are free from any appearance of bias or corruption is stronger than the need in elections for legislative or executive offices. Also, the extra public funding only applies when the independent expenditures expressly urge voters to vote for or against any particular candidate; the extra public funding doesn’t apply to independent expenditures that comment on candidates but don’t say “vote for” or “vote against”. Finally, the judge upheld the law because the amount of independent expenditures needed to trigger the extra public funding is so great, that the provision is unlikely to be used in any event. Thanks to Rick Hasen of ElectionLawBlog for the news.