Normally I'm optomistic so I'm sorry to be a wet blanket or a rain cloud on the celebration parade, but this isn't a complete victory and we should realize that. This glass is only half full.
While Judge Juan Colas, in striking down much of Act 10, a rammed through law virtually eliminating collective bargaining for public employees, is good news, there's also more to the story.
While local and municipal employees, as well as employees of school districts will have most of their union rights restored, Act 10 remains in affect for all state employees.
The law remains largely in force for state workers, though a federal judge struck down part of that section of the law as well earlier this year. But for city, county, and school workers the decision by Dane County Judge Juan Colas returns the law to its status before Walker signed his law in March 2011.It was largely the state workers who began the Capitol protests starting the Saturday after information on Act 10 came out late on a Friday until busses could be arranged to get massive numbers of people to Madison starting Tuesday. While those outside of Madison carpooled or drove to join the protests, the massive initial crowd of 35,000 didn't happen right away. It was state union members who handled the coordinations of the sleep ins, distribution of donated food, and distribution of information.Colas ruled that the law violated workers' constitutional rights by denying to union workers certain powers available to their nonunion counterparts. The decision could still be overturned on appeal - the Supreme Court has already restored the law once in June 2011 after it was blocked by a different Dane County judge earlier that year.
"The decision essentially creates the (2011) status quo for municipal employees and school district employees because it declared that the essential provisions of Act 10 to be unconstitutional," said Lester Pines, an attorney for the Madison teachers and city of Milwaukee employees who are plaintiffs.
The other bad news is that JD Van Hollen, our Republican Attorney General, will once again issue an appeal to our 4:3 RW majority State Supreme Court as he has with other laws rammed through and quickly signed by Scott Walker.
In fact Walker derided Colas as a "liberal activist judge" has already committed to the appeal and said he was confident that the State Supreme Court would overturn the ruling.