PHOENIX β Upset with his ruling on education funding, Gov. Doug Ducey is taking the unusual step of lashing out at a federal judge appointed by a Republican president and calling on him to resign.
βJudge (Neil) Wake puts on a robe in the morning and thinks heβs God,β Ducey said late Tuesday in the immediate wake of the decision saying the governor and state acted illegally in taking money from an education trust account without getting required congressional approval. βBut heβs not.β
And the governor said he intends to spread the word about what he claims is not just an incorrect decision but an active bias by the judge against the school funding plan that Ducey crafted and Wake concluded was illegally enacted.
βI want to tell you what everyone down at the courthouse needs to know,β Ducey said.
βItβs time for Judge Wake to retire,β the governor said. βHeβs an embarrassment to the legal community.β
Ducey doubled down on his insults of Wake on Wednesday: βThere are third-year law students at ASU that can write a more coherent opinion than the one that he put forward.β
Wake said that, as a judge, he cannot comment on the personal attacks.
But Ducey press aide Patrick Ptak, asked if it was unfair of Ducey to attack a judge who is unable to respond, said, βhell, no.β
βHe stopped being a judge and started being a politician,β said Ptak, adding Wake βhad an agenda.β
βHe canβt hide behind his robe,β he continued. βIf heβs going to throw punches, he can take them.β
Wake got to the bench in 2004 after being nominated by Republican President George W. Bush, with the recommendation of the stateβs two GOP senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl.
The governor, however, brushed aside a question about the judgeβs Republican credentials.
βThis is an activist judge who solicited this lawsuit because he didnβt like Proposition 123,β Ducey responded.
The record, however, shows that it was an individual, Michael Pierce, who filed the suit on his own in May 2016, without legal help, after the approval of Prop. 123.
What Wake did, however, may have kept the case alive by getting legal help for Pierce.
Andrew Jacob told Capitol Media Services he had run into Wake about five years ago at an event at a law firm, telling the judge that he was partially retiring and only going to work part time.
βI offered that if he ever had a civil litigant who had a case that had merit and needed help with it, I would consider volunteering my time,β Jacob said.
It wasnβt until some time later, the attorney said, that Wake called, informed him of the basics of this case and asked if he would pick it up.
βHe thinks this case has some merit to it and the litigant really didnβt know what to do with it for the next step,β Jacob recalled of the conversation. Jacob said he agreed, at which point he said that the only thing Wake did is give him the case number to review the pleadings filed so far and get in touch with Pierce.
A review of Wakeβs 15 years on the federal bench by Capitol Media Services shows the judge decided a number of controversial issues.
In some he ruled in favor of the state, like a 2008 decision rejecting challenges to a new state law approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature that provided for the suspension and revocation of the business licenses of employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers.
But Wake has also blocked state and local officials from prosecuting a Flagstaff man who produced and sold antiwar T-shirts with the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, calling it βcore political speech fully protected by the First Amendment.β
He also barred enforcement of a law that made it a crime to panhandle, saying the simple act of asking for money or food is protected by the First Amendment. And he said Arizona cannot refuse to provide family planning funds to Planned Parenthood solely because the organization also performs abortions, saying that conflicts with federal protections for Medicaid patients to choose their own care providers.
More recently, Wake struck down Arizonaβs child molestation law because it read that once the state proves a defendant knowingly touched the private parts of a child β even by a parent changing a diaper or a doctor examining a child β the burden falls on the accused to prove there was no sexual intent.
And he ruled that inmates suing the state over allegations of poor health care can proceed on a class-action basis.
Before being appointed to the court, Wake argued for Republican interests.
He represented members of the stateβs GOP congressional delegation which challenged the lines drawn by the Legislature β then with a Democrat Senate and Republican House β for congressional districts.
A decade later Wake was representing the Arizona Republican Party in its fight over lines drawn by the newly created Independent Redistricting Commission.
Even after taking the bench Wake found himself siding with Republicans on a redistricting dispute.
