A Dane County District Attorney filed a brief Tuesday asking to continue the injunction on the Budget Repair Bill following an appeal by the State Department of Justice.
In the brief, Attorney Ismael Ozanne said Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi's restraining order on publishing the bill responds to a violation of the Open Meetings Law, not the content of the bill itself.
Ozanne said the court case cited by the DOJ in its appeal does not apply to this case because that case attempted to stop the publication of a bill due to the its unconstitutionality, unlike the current case.
""The District Attorney here does not seek to block publication simply to prevent an allegedly unconstitutional bill from becoming law,"" Ozanne wrote in the brief.
""Rather, he seeks to redress past violations of the rights of the public to sufficient prior notice of and meaningful access to the March 9, 2011 Joint Committee of Conference meeting.""
The current injunction delays Secretary of State Doug LaFollette's ability to publish the bill.
The bill passed on March 10, and LaFollette originally said he would take the full 10 business days allowed before he published it.
Before LaFollette published, and Sumi found on March 18 that the Joint Committee violated the law.In the DOJ appeal, state lawyers said Sumi does not have the authority to issue such an injunction and argued the open meetings law is a legislative rule and therefore not in the jurisdiction of the courts.
