New York Times

Supreme Court Won't Rule on Wisconsin Campaign Finance Case

October 4, 2016

by Adam Liptak

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away without comment an appeal in a campaign finance case arising from an investigation into campaign spending in Wisconsin.

Last year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court shut down an investigation into spending to oppose a 2012 effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. The court also ordered prosecutors to destroy the documents they had gathered.

The Guardian recently disclosed about 1,500 pages of the documents, which seemed to show substantial coordination between candidates and ostensibly independent groups.

The public version of the prosecutors’ request for United States Supreme Court review was heavily redacted but appeared to address two main questions: whether the Wisconsin Supreme Court had been too lax in policing coordination between candidates and independent groups, and whether two State Supreme Court justices who had benefited from campaign spending should have recused themselves.

In a brief urging the United States Supreme Court not to hear the case — Chisholm v. Two Unnamed Petitioners, No. 15-1416 — the state’s attorney general, Brad D. Schimel, said the Wisconsin Legislature had codified the State Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law, meaning that there was nothing to review.

“The people of Wisconsin thus made as clear as they possibly could that they wish to put this unfortunate chapter behind them,” Mr. Schimel wrote.

He added that there had been no need for the two justices, Michael J. Gableman and David T. Prosser, to disqualify themselves. A 2009 Supreme Court decision that required a West Virginia Supreme Court justice to recuse himself from a case involving a campaign supporter, Mr. Schimel wrote, concerned a more extreme potential conflict.