It's not a surprise that the rightwing and GOP-obeisant majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court has thrown out Gov. Evers' statewide masking order.
Wisconsin Supreme Court overturns statewide mask mandate, blocks Evers from declaring multiple emergency orders
In a 4-3 decision, conservative justices in the majority declared the statewide mask mandate invalid and ruled Evers exceeded his authority in issuing multiple emergency declarations over the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Evers used the emergency orders to require face coverings be worn indoors statewide after lawmakers opted not to.
Those in this peculiar, partisan 4-3 court majority continue to help their more openly-Republican allies diminish this Governor's authority in ways that former governors, and especially defeated GOP Gov. Scott Walker, were never restrained.
But let's give the court's four unofficial Republican members their due for backing several virus-related freedoms in their majority ruling Wednesday.
* Because why should the virus be disinvited from Wisconsin by Big Government masking mandates when other states are making sure the virus can move as it chooses?
* Remember that a GOP State Senator said he'd still oppose mask mandates even if Wisconsin's COVID19 caseload exploded ten-fold, so now, Go COVID!
And the caseload is again trending upward - and while the numbers are not as bad as they've been, give it time.
* And similarly, why should a Wisconsinite's freedom to spread the virus - and particularly its new variants which buttinski medical experts say are strengthening into yet another viral wave - be limited when other people in other states have already been freed to spread the virus as they choose?
* From a business perspective, why should southern beach communities with their spring break advantages get all of the virus's benefits?
* Why should Wisconsin front-line medical workers with slowing shifts let their counterparts in states with fewer pesky COVID rules get career advancement opportunities and more on-the-job-training which COVID19 freely provides?
* It's also an equally unfair barrier to force Wisconsinites to travel hundreds of miles to South Dakota bars and restaurants for a week of motorcycling fun and potentially also breathe in freer exposure to the virus at the same time.
* And given the 4-3 court majority's Wednesday ruling, and some earlier decisions, it's a given that it will soon rule that the Legislature's GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee and not Gov. Evers gets to say how and where COVID19-related Federal grants are directed.
Because as GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos noted the other day, Republicans who bravely come to the State Capitol to collect their meal money - because they had no choice in the matter - are also battling a dictatorial Governor who is hell-bent on saving lives and the state's economy, too.
And speaking of food aid, WI gets $50 million in food assistance monthly because it had a statewide COVID order, so I guess that's out the window now.
* On the other hand, low-income people who were wasting too much time feeding their family this past COVID year are now freed from that burden and can look for work. That freedom to self-bootstrap is so important to hold dear.
The rightist Wisconsin court majority has rebranded itself as an activist subsidiary of the State Republican Party that has repeatedly strengthened the GOP-run Legislature's grip across State Capitol rather than serving as a fair-minded referee between the legislative and executive branches.
The court majority waved through this latest partisan GOP power-play Wednesday even though Vos and then-GOP State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (now promoted to US Representatives in a safely-gerrymandered district from which he tried to prevent the legal certification of President Joe Biden's record-setting tally) took most of 2020 off as the pandemic raged so legislators were free to focus on their re-election campaigns.
'Contests' with outcomes already rigged in the the GOP's favor through redistricting maps drawn up in secret by private attorneys using taxpayer dollars.
Because as Vos might have put it, what choice did they have?