Wisconsin Supreme Court rules Sumi had no authority to vacate Walker's Bill.

Okay, so isn't the real question this. If he wanted to get married to his partner, did he rule in favor of the law to make this possible? That is when he needed to recuse himself. Follow this line of reasoning very carefully. Then if he does marry his partner after he ruled in favor of it, wouldn't that be seen as passing a law to benefit himself? Which would in point of fact make him bias even if the marriage happened a year later. Because as a judge, the perception would be that he was passing the law to help himself in the process. Then there certainly would be a case for bias. At this point, there is no case but in the near future there might be depending on his action. This is regardless of the fact of his personal life because he would directly be receiving the benefits of his judicial decision. There isn't a case at this point in time because he has not acted on his judgment. In other words, it can't be proven one way or another that his personal beliefs played a role. However, if in the near future it showed that this decision personally benefited the judge (i.e. got married) then his judgment could be called into direct question because of that fact.

They played a dangerous game, one tney hoped to win by electing a liberal judge to the WI Supreme Court. That didn't work out so well for them, but as you say, they stalled the inevitable long enough for the unions to get new contracts signed before the law took effect. Maybe after there have been numerous layoffs, people will finally understand that the unions are about power, not about the workers. The same old cronies will continue in power in the union, no one will ever be able to fire the bad teachers or reward the good ones, they will continue to have to keep underperforming workers and for all they spend they will get less and less and less. So, it's a partial win for the unions, but it's a loss for the whole democratic system. They manipulated and bullied and deserted and litigated and although they didn't win, they didn't completely lose.

Which is just what the Unions wanted. Time to settle contracts so that they can blame the higher taxes on the Governors budget. We do have some Rep. trying to tell the truth. He told a town Hall meeting that school districts can change Insurance Co and save moeny but many Boards do not want to upset the workers. I know in some districts, the district do the teacher in service and curriculum writing during the school year and hiring sub teachers so the teacher do not have to give up their summers. Other schools are using the new law to contract out jobs that used to be done by District Employees and saving money in the process.

Both supporters and critics of the Bill ended up just forcing the tough decisions lower into local governments to stress over. There is no winner in this mess. The too-powerful, largely corrupt Unions did not consider the future any more than the panicking State representatives considered how much burden was being passed off to already strapped Locals. I do not fully understand the Wisc SC ruling, however. They stated it was not the Judiciaries' place to make rules for the Legislature, which is very true, but Judge Sumi's decision was based on a legislative rule being broken, not making any rules of her own devising. The whole thing looks like a Democratic face-saving maneuver, 'cuz if Sumi was right the Democrats would have had to admit to abandoning their jobs temporarily. Somebody needs to do a full accounting of Union monetary transactions, 'cuz I worry some palms were greased with greenery.