A Wisconsin Supreme Court justice said he won't participate in a case determining if public sector workers regain bargaining rights.

Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn's recusal puts the focus on whether liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz will also step away from the Act 10 case.

Justice Brian Hagedorn Hagedorn served as legal counsel to Republican Gov. Scott Walker and helped draft the bill that became Act 10.

Two years after Wisconsin was subject to the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, the ideological leaning of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is yet again in the hands of voters in the state’s April election.

Now the issue has come up in the race for the state's highest court, which has no say over how Wisconsin manages DNA testing.

A conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice will not participate in a pending case that will determine whether tens of thousands of public sector workers regain collective bargaining rights that were taken away by a 2011 law.

Hagedorn's recusal marks a major blow to Republicans' hopes of a favorable ruling in their quest to uphold the 2011 law that gutted public sector collective bargaining in Wisconsin