Justices vote to keep more meetings closed

MADISON - The Wisconsin Supreme Court voted Thursday to keep more of its deliberations behind closed doors.

The decision – on a 5-2 vote – came amid acrimony that has come to mark the court in recent years.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, like other courts, has always conducted its arguments on cases in public and its deliberations about those cases behind closed doors.

But in 1999, the court became one of the first state high courts — if not the first — to hold its administrative meetings before the public. At the meetings, shown live in recent years on the WisconsinEye Public Affairs Network, the justices discussed issues both meaty and mundane, many of them pertaining to court policies.

That began to change five years ago, when the court voted to curtail the number of meetings it held publicly. Under that policy, deliberations have been held publicly only when the court has discussed proposed changes to its formal rules.

For instance, the justices in April debated in public whether they should tighten court rules that dictate when judges must step aside from cases involving people or groups who spent money in their elections. The court rejected the rule changes, 5-2.

The same majority voted Thursday to stop holding such discussions in public. As such, when the court next takes up its ethics policies, it will do