A little over three years ago, in response to the passage of the “Act 10,” bill, A.K.A. the budget repair bill that removed the requirement to engage in collective bargaining with non-public safety unions from state and local government, Snowboarder Bo started a thread that asked, " Is it [the bill] constitutionally sound?"
I opined in an early post (#8) that it was constitutional.
Since that time, the bill has been the subject of not one but two legal attacks. In Wisconsin Education Association Council et al, v. Walker,WEAC et al contended that the bill infringed on the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause and the First Amendment. The Seventh Circuit rejected those claims in total last year.
Two other unions tried a couple of different FirstAmendment and Equal Protection Clause theories. In Laborers Local 236AFL‐CIO,etal. v. Walker, the Seventh Circuit has disposed of those as well.
For this reason, I would now contend that my 2011 view of the constitutionality of Act 10 is generally vindicated.
And of course the claims of anyone from that linked thread who claimed otherwise now has a substantially higher hill to surmount if still wishing to claim a lack of constitutionality.
I have commented before, more than once, about the low cost of offering up predictions on the SDMB – as long as the prediction is in accord with left-wing thinking. A person who predicts a future outcome or event in a way that’s consistent with the desired left-wing result doesn’t fear negative response from the community at the time he makes the prediction.
I think there’s value in following up predictions made.
The other option would have been to post in the three-year-old thread, I suppose, but it seems to me that long-standing practice is to prefer posting a new thread with a link to the old one.
Or are you suggesting that subject simply shouldn’t be mentioned again?
Since you started this thread to point out that you were right, and since I don’t recall you ever posting a thread of this nature before, may we assume…?
You may assume either your memory is faulty, or this is the first time I’ve been right.
I’ve posted several “I was wrong,” threads before. The only ones I remember starting that were intended to crow about being right were just that: not sober updates to predictions, but happy dance threads about election results.
If there’s anything that would warm the cockles of a right winger’s heart, it’s the notion that public employees are getting the shaft and there’s nothing they can do about it. So it’s constitutional. So will the repeal, which will happen when Walker and his Republican co-thugs get voted out in November.
I suggest no such thing. But your later posting that you wished to reopen the debate has nothing to do with your OP. Given that, your justification in your post of 4:09 seems more to do with ex post facto providing a debate. I encourage debate - it’s in the forum title, after all - but you didn’t present one. In the future, perhaps it would be better if you did.
Jonathan, we’ve never required a formal statement of the proposition to be defended or rebutted before, have we?
Here is the relevant section of my OP that I contend identified a claim for debate:
Are you really saying that these words do not present a debatable proposition? The Seventh Circuit is not the Supreme Court. There are people here who take the position that even a Supreme Court ruling does not close the question of constitutionality – witness the claims that arise every time Heller and Macdonald are discussed in the context of Second Amendment rights, or Citizen’s United and McCutcheon with regard to campaign finance. If the Supreme Court cannot settle those issues, why would the Seventh Circuit’s ruling foreclose discussion here?
As I reread my own post, it occurs to me that while the proposition is not foreclosed, the relative weight of the claims has shifted quite a bit, leaving those opposed to the bill in substantially worse position.
Is that the reason you’re not eager to see any debate proposition here, Jonathan?
