Wisconsin Supreme Court Suspends Judge Dugan

Judge Hannah Dugan, the Milwaukee judge who helped escort a criminal illegal alien out of her chambers to evade arrest, was just suspended from her job by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended a judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities, saying Tuesday that it is in the public interest to relieve her of her duties as she faces two federal charges…

In its two-page order, the state Supreme Court said it was acting on its own initiative and not responding to a request from anyone. Liberal justices control the court 4-3.

The AP story doesn’t say if this is a suspension with or without pay. Judge Dugan was already excused from her workload as of Sunday. A reserve judge was appointed to take over Judge Dugan’s cases starting yesterday.

The county’s chief judge, Carl Ashley, said late Sunday that a reserve judge would take over Dugan’s calendar on Monday morning. The reserve judge was not named in the statement released to media.

As mentioned, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has a majority of liberal justices. There was a special election for one of those seats just a few weeks ago.

Earlier this month, a liberal judge, Susan Crawford, was elected to the court over a conservative jurist supported by President Trump and Elon Musk. Her victory preserved a narrow liberal majority on the court just months after Mr. Trump carried Wisconsin. The election was the most expensive judicial race in American history.

So this isn’t a case where a conservative court made up of Trump appointees is doing this to support him. These judges are presumably sympathetic to Judge Dugan, at least the majority of them, but the reality is that she won’t be working anytime soon as this case makes its way through court. Dugan’s arraignment is set for May 15, two weeks from Thursday. It could takes months before she has a court date. She could take a plea but that would be more likely if she had no argument to make in her own defense.

Andrew McCarthy made the case yesterday at NRO that, despite the witnesses to what she did, this is not going to be an easy slam dunk for the prosecution.

We are not talking here about Dugan’s moral or political culpability. We are talking about whether proof beyond a reasonable doubt can be established in the criminal justice system, in which she is presumed innocent and enjoys important legal protections — including the skepticism of federal courts that criminal prosecution is an appropriate vehicle for addressing the actions of public officials within the scope of their authority…

The law is that, while the states may not obstruct federal law enforcement, the feds may not commandeer state resources to enforce federal law…

Trust me when I tell you that the federal agents who planned to arrest Flores-Ruiz in the state courthouse would never have done the same thing in a federal courthouse. They didn’t tell Judge Dugan or the chief judge of the court that they were coming. They didn’t alert court security personnel or the local police…

This is going to be Dugan’s defense: She was acting within the scope of her official duties, it is not illegal per se to allow a defendant and his counsel to leave the courtroom by a limited-access route, and her actions were consistent with her judgment regarding the proper administration of the state judicial system, which the federal agents — ignoring principles of federalism — were disturbing with their covert arrest operation. She will say she was not hiding Flores-Ruiz; as a city official, by allowing an illegal alien to leave a state facility, she was declining to be commandeered into assisting federal authorities in enforcing federal immigration law, just as the Milwaukee corrections department does, consistent with the city’s sanctuary policies.

Maybe that defense is a stretch or maybe you get a few anti-Trump progressives on the jury who love the idea that what really happened here is that the feds were illegally commandeering poor Judge Dugan and she resisted. I’m not saying that’s a good argument or that it will definitely work, I’m just saying I can imagine a jury on whom it could work. And if she and her attorneys can imagine winning this outright, they are less likely to accept a plea deal that could end this sooner rather than later.

Let’s wrap this up with an opinion from Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld who says this looks to him like a legitimate case against Judge Dugan.

A lot of people have been asking me for my thoughts on the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan. Here’s a quick breakdown. Long story short: This looks to me like a legitimate arrest. pic.twitter.com/usRIGghoRQ

— Jed Rubenfeld (@Jed_Rubenfeld) April 29, 2025