Another leftist Wisconsin judge is in trouble for abusing the powers of the third branch. It’s the latest exhibit of power-grabbing local judges perhaps learning some dangerous lessons from rogue members of the federal judiciary.
Dane County Judge Ellen Berz has been given a seven-day suspension for incidents in which she was found to have acted impulsively and with bias, USA Today first reported. The disciplinary action comes after federal prosecutors charged a Milwaukee County judge for allegedly helping an illegal immigrant facing battery charges elude arrest.
The liberal-led Wisconsin Supreme Court handed down the punishment, insisting the one-week suspension is sufficient “to impress upon Judge Berz the necessity of patience, impartiality, and restraint in her work, and to demonstrate to the public the judiciary’s dedication to promoting professionalism among its members,” according to the court’s ruling, issued Tuesday.
“We conclude as discipline for the misconduct, Judge Berz should be suspended without pay for a period of seven days, commencing June 26, 2025,” states the ruling, obtained by Courthouse News.
‘A Bad Idea’
The wheels of justice do turn slowly. USA Today noted the complaint, filed by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission in October, stemmed in part from an incident in December 2021.
Berz threatened to arrest a defendant in a drunk driving case after she learned the accused had failed to show up to court because he was in the hospital. According to the complaint, the judge asked the bailiff to apprehend the absent defendant, but the bailiff had to remain to provide courtroom security. So, Berz told those in the courtroom that she would retrieve the missing defendant herself and that “if something happened to her when she went to pick up [the defendant], that they would hear about it on the news,” the complaint states.
En route to the hospital, the judge decided against going through with her plan. The defendant’s attorney, according to the complaint, talked Berz out of it, saying “the trip was a bad idea, as the judge is to be the neutral decision maker in the case.” Berz instead returned to the courthouse and issued a warrant for the defendant’s arrest, according to the complaint.
In a 2019 incident, the judge treated a defendant disrespectfully, failing to act “at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
Berz was first elected to Branch 11 of the liberal Dane County Circuit Court in 2012. She has easily won reelection ever since, including last year when she again ran unopposed.
Berz, who began her legal career as an assistant district attorney and then worked for several years in the State Public Defender’s office, served for a time as a criminal justice representative to former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno in the Clinton administration. According to Ballotpedia, Berz was a union-designated legal observer during the 2011 labor demonstrations against collective-bargaining reforms.
Judicial Obstruction
Late last month, Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was charged in federal court on accusations of obstructing a U.S. agency and concealing an individual to prevent an arrest. The liberal judge is accused of intentionally misdirecting federal agents away from Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a previously deported Mexican national who was appearing before Dugan on serious battery charges. Dugan, according to the complaint, was “visibly angry” that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other federal law enforcement officials had come to the courthouse to take Flores-Ruiz into custody.
While the federal officials were down the hall, Dugan is accused of escorting Flores-Ruiz and his legal counsel out of the courtroom through the “jury door,” which leads to a non-public area of the courthouse. Federal law enforcement officials apprehended the illegal immigrant following a brief foot chase.
A federal grand jury subsequently indicted Dugan on the charges. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has — at least for now — relieved Dugan of her duties as the case proceeds. The judge faces up to six years in prison if convicted. That’s a big if. U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman, a President Bill Clinton nominee and arguably one of the more liberal activist judges in the federal court system, just happened to draw Dugan’s case. Adelman penned a 2020 piece attacking the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, titled, “The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy.”
‘A Disservice’
Following Dugan’s arrest, leftist Judge Monica Isham, who presides over the relatively new second branch of Sawyer County’s circuit court, threatened to stop holding court proceedings. In an email sent late last month to members of Wisconsin’s judiciary, Isham declared that she had “no intention of allowing anyone to be taken out of my courtroom by [ICE agents] and sent to a concentration camp.”
“Should I start raising bail money?” the judge wrote in her hyperbolic email.
Isham threatened that if the state court system doesn’t provide support and guidance for judges, “I will refuse to hold court in Branch II in Sawyer County.”
“I will not put myself or my staff who may feel compelled to help me or my community in harms [sic] way,” she wrote.
Isham’s judicial activist temper tantrum in solidarity with Dugan won the acclaim of fellow leftists and condemnation from critics. In a joint statement, state Sen. Romaine Quinn and state Rep. Chanz Green said the judge should resign if she fails to uphold the integrity of the judiciary. They cited Wisconsin’s Code of Judicial Conduct that requires that “a judge shall respect and comply with the law and shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
“Judge Isham’s threat to close court certainly does not promote public confidence in our court system or uphold the integrity of her position as a public official in this state. It is a disservice to the residents of Sawyer County,” the lawmakers, who represent Sawyer County, stated in the press release.
‘Corrosive Effect’
Isham remains on the bench, and she continues to hear cases, according to recent court records. The Sawyer County Record (SCR) last week reported that Isham has been holding hearings via Zoom, “depriving the public of the benefit of cases being heard in open court.”
The activist judge is no stranger to controversy. As the SCR’s editorial board recently asserted, “There are now real questions about her fitness for the bench.”
Now, the editorial board is accusing the judge of “directly violating the law by refusing to turn over copies of an email tantrum she sent in the wake of Judge Hannah Dugan’s arrest.” The editorial doesn’t take issue with Isham’s request for guidance from the court system on how to handle ICE arrests of illegal immigrants, but it does raise concerns about the judge’s “repeated behavior” that “suggests she sees herself as being above the law”
“We are forced to question how long the state intends to tolerate a judge who obviously feels comfortable with such behavior,” the editorial board asserts. “When a judge shows contempt for the law and for others, it has a uniquely corrosive effect on the public’s trust in the legal system. That is what Isham did and continues to do.”
Isham could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Rep. Tom Tiffany, whose 7th Congressional District includes Sawyer County, told The Federalist that he knows of no consequences for Isham’s conduct.
Jim Miller, a member of the Hayward City Council and a Republican Party leader in the 7th Congressional District, said things have mostly quieted down since Isham blasted out her email. He said the judge’s statements are “going to stick with her for quite some time.”
“If I were in her shoes, I would issue a clarification saying, ‘Emotions got the best of me, and I won’t let it happen again,’” Miller told The Federalist in a phone interview.
‘Kings in Judicial Robes’
Children of the 1980s likely recall an anti-drug public service announcement in which a father confronts his teenage son after finding a box of joints in the boy’s closet. “Who taught you how to do this stuff?” the concerned dad demands. “You, alright! I learned it by watching you?” the kid fires back. Ouch. The truth hits stoner dad like a $50 Pink Floyd concert ticket.
Local judges in Wisconsin and elsewhere certainly have been watching rogue federal jurists who have routinely overstepped their authority in a judicial resistance against Trump’s policies. Leftist judges have issued suspect national injunctions on everything from President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants with violent criminal records to cutting funding for civil rights-abusing universities and DEI-pushing NGOs.
U.S. Fifth Circuit Appellate Court Judge James C. Ho recently railed against the district court power grab last month in a death penalty ruling.
“Our founders didn’t fight a Revolutionary War to replace one king in royal garb with hundreds of kings in judicial robes,” Ho wrote in his concurrence to his majority opinion.
The judge noted that the Louisiana case was “not the first time the appeals court had to intervene because a district court abused its powers.”
“If a district judge abuses the legal process in a hurried effort to thwart the lawful political choices of the electorate, appellate courts are well within their right to intervene and grant emergency relief,” Ho, a Trump nominee, wrote.
As my Federalist colleague Shawn Fleetwood reported on Wednesday, Ho recently took the U.S. Supreme Court to task for the “disrespect” it has shown lower courts that have ruled in favor of the executive branch’s powers to deal with illegal immigration and to enforce immigration law.
“I write to state my sincere concerns about how the district judge as well as the President and other officials have been treated in this case,” Ho wrote in a concurring opinion. “I worry that the disrespect they have been shown will not inspire continued respect for the judiciary, without which we cannot long function.”
As the Supreme Court fails to check power-grabbing lower federal courts, state and local judges are watching.
And learning.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
