Attempt to recall Speaker Robin Vos could face roadblock with Supreme Court redistricting ruling

MADISON - A state Supreme Court ruling ordering new legislative maps in Wisconsin is raising questions about whether a new effort to recall Assembly Speaker Robin Vos could take place before new district boundaries are drawn. The December ruling declaring the state's legislative maps unconstitutional banned state election officials "from using the current maps in all future elections." Some legal experts say this likely affects a group of largely Racine County residents who on Wednesday launched a recall campaign against Vos in the 63rd Assembly District.

"That language is pretty categorical, so my sense is that no recall election could be held until new maps are adopted or the court takes some other authorizing action," Robert Yablon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who specializes in election and constitutional law, said.

Rick Esenberg, president and chief counsel of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, said he also believes the ruling in the redistricting case prevents election officials from holding a recall election.

"I’d think a recall election in the Speaker’s current districts could not be conducted and signatures collected from persons who reside outside his new district presumably couldn’t count in determining whether an election can proceed in a new district (should his current one be changed)," Esenberg said in a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

But Chad Oldfather, a law professor at Marquette University, said he's hesitant to conclude the redistricting ruling bars the recall effort.

"For one thing, the question wasn’t one the court was considering in Clarke, and courts are generally pretty reluctant to consider themselves bound by statements in past decisions that incidentally relate to some future situation they didn’t have in mind at the time," he said. "In other words, if someone during the course of the writing of the Clarke opinion had said 'what about recall elections?' there’s a very good chance the court would have added something to the effect of 'except recall elections.' But that presumably didn’t happen because that’s not what anyone had on their mind."

Oldfather said the state's electoral processes ought not to bar voters from recalling elected officials under the current maps.

"It’d be freezing otherwise recallable officials in place for reasons that have nothing to do with the purposes of the recall mechanism," he said.

In a letter to Vos dated Wednesday, Wisconsin Elections Commission chief legal counsel Jim Witecha raised the issue and said the commission must research whether an officeholder can be recalled, and whether petitions may be circulated, when the official's district has been ruled unconstitutional.

"This legal examination is ongoing, and the Commission has NOT yet formulated its opinion on recall and circulation viability in light of (the ruling)," Witecha wrote. He said commission officials will continue discussing the matter with state Department of Justice attorneys.

A spokeswoman for the state DOJ declined to comment.

Matthew Snorek of Burlington on Wednesday filed paperwork with the Wisconsin Elections Commission notifying the agency of his intent to circulate a recall petition against Vos of Rochester. He and a group of Racine County residents who have long opposed Vos plan to gather thousands of signatures to trigger an election to recall Vos over his opposition to Donald Trump and unwillingness to impeach the state's top election official over the 2020 election.

Snorek did not immediately say whether his team has considered the implications of the redistricting ruling.

Vos, who has been speaker for 10 years and has represented the 63rd Assembly District since 2005, has faced fierce criticism from members of his own party in recent years over his rejection of calls to decertify the 2020 election, which has been impossible as long as supporters of Trump have called for the idea.

After Snorek filed his petition Vos called the effort "a waste of time, resources and effort."

"The effort today is no surprise since the people involved cannot seem to get over any election in which their preferred candidate doesn’t win," Vos said.

The move to try to recall Vos comes two months after a Racine County-based group focused on the 2020 election ran television ads threatening to unseat Vos if he did not advance articles of impeachment against elections administrator Meagan Wolfe — an effort Vos has blocked.

Snorek told the commission he was launching a recall effort of Vos, in part, because of Vos' past statements promising to work to keep Trump from becoming the GOP presidential nominee in 2024. Trump has targeted Vos since 2020 after the Assembly Speaker repeatedly refused to entertain the illegal idea of undoing the results of Trump's loss in 2020 in Wisconsin to President Joe Biden.

Jay Schroeder, a Neenah resident and former candidate for secretary of state, is the director of the campaign to recall Vos. He said the move is intended to "build confidence in our 2024 elections."

"Robin Vos has done the opposite. Wisconsin deserves better. Together we can," he said in a statement Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, a former state Senate Majority Leader who survived a recall in 2012 after the passage of the collective bargaining measure known as Act 10, said the effort to recall Vos could be used more productively.

"I wish that the Republicans that — and I don't know them — I wish that they'd spend their time on other things. I don't know that it's of value to anybody," Fitzgerald said.

"I wish they'd be out there working to get more Republicans elected. I mean, I went through the recall after Act 10 and all that. I think back about all the time and resources. I wish they were putting their efforts in a different place."

Lawrence Andrea of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report from Washington D.C.

Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Supreme Court's redistricting ruling complicates bid to recall Vos