[V]ermont Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Skoglund is stepping down after more than two decades on the state’s top court.
And she didn’t waste any words in letting Gov. Phil Scott know about it, sending him a one-sentence letter on Wednesday.
“I will resign my position as Associate Justice on September 1, 2019,” she wrote.
Seven Days was first to report Wednesday on Skoglund’s intention to resign her position.
“I am satisfied! I mean, what else can you say? I’m very lucky. I am satisfied,” she told Paul Heintz, in an interview about her life and plans to leave the court. “I just need to take a chance and see what else I can do before I drop dead.”
Skoglund was sworn in as an associate justice on the five-member Vermont Supreme Court on Aug. 27, 1997, following her appointment to the post by Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat.
Skoglund was not in her office Wednesday at the Vermont Supreme Court and could not immediately be reached for comment.
Her resignation will allow Scott, a Republican, to make his second Vermont Supreme Court justice pick. In March 2017 Scott appointed Justice Karen Carroll to a post on the high court.
The court currently has three women and two men, with Skoglund having the longest tenure of all five members.
The other members of the Vermont Supreme Court include:
• Chief Justice Paul Reiber, appointed by Republican Gov. Jim Douglas as an associate justice in October 2003, and later sworn in as chief justice by Douglas in December 2004;
• Justice Beth Robinson was appointed by Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin in November 2011.
• Justice Harold Eaton was also appointed by Shumlin, in October 2014.
The Vermont Judicial Nominating Board will screen applicants and submit a list of qualified people seeking the post, with the names presented to the governor and kept confidential.
Scott will then make a selection, which still needs to be confirmed by the state Senate.
“The governor has a lot of respect for her, and appreciates her service,” Rebecca Kelley, a spokesperson for Scott, said Wednesday of Skoglund. “It will be a loss for the court.”
Kelley added that while the process to fill Skoglund’s spot on the court can start anytime, the actual appointment cannot be made until Sept. 1, when the vacancy is officially created.
Skoglund worked in the Vermont Attorney General’s Office from 1978 to 1994, holding positions ranging from special assistant attorney general to chief of the civil law division.
She was then named to the state’s trial court bench in 1994, serving in the post until her appointment in 1997 as an associate justice on the Vermont Supreme Court.
Robert Appel, a civil rights and defense attorney who has also served as the state’s defender general, said Wednesday he recalled working with Skoglund when they were both in the Attorney General’s Office.
Appel said Skoglund, like him, didn’t attend law school before passing the bar exam, instead going through a process known as “reading the law” to prepare to become an attorney. Appel has also argued cases before her during her tenure on the Vermont Supreme Court.
“Despite being light-hearted and jovial by nature, she took her work quite seriously,” Appel said. “She was prepared when she came out on the bench.”
He said Skoglund wasn’t shy about jumping in and asking attorneys questions during oral arguments. Asked to describe Skoglund’s judicial philosophy, Appel replied, “I think she maintained that term, ‘common humanity’.”
He then pointed to the case Baker v. Vermont.
In that 1999 case, the Supreme Court decided that the Legislature either needed to legalize same-sex marriage or start a new legal institution very similar to marriage to serve same-sex couples.
Vermont, in 2000, became the first state to allow civil unions and the fourth to legalize same-sex marriage in 2009.
Appel said despite Skoglund’s appointment to the high court by a Democratic governor, he wouldn’t describe her as a liberal.
“It really depends on the case,” he said. “She’s definitely an independent thinker. She doesn’t go in lockstep with her colleagues.”
In fact, Skoglund has authored several sharply worded dissents during her time on the bench.
Take the case of a Vermont Supreme Court ruling last year when the court upheld the constitutionality of the state’s revenge porn law.
Skoglund did not side with the majority of the court in that decision. “While disseminating ‘revenge porn’ may be a repulsive and harmful action,” she wrote, “the statute’s attempt to criminalize this behavior runs afoul of the rights and privileges of the First Amendment.”
“Can revenge porn cause extreme emotional distress? Oh, yes,” Skoglund added. “However, while the majority finds a compelling State interest in preventing the nonconsensual disclosure of nude or sexual images of a person obtained in the context of a confidential relationship, I cannot agree that, in this day and age of the internet, the State can reasonably assume a role in protecting people from their own folly and trump First Amendment protections for speech.”
In a separate case in May 2016, Skoglund penned another dissent, opposing the majority decision that expanded the legal duty of mental health workers to warn of potential dangers posed by a patient.
Skoglund termed that majority decision, “illogical, potentially fatal to effective patient-therapist relationships and places an impossibly onerous obligation on those who provide mental health care to the people of this state.”
Vermont State Court Administrator Patricia Gabel said while working in the judiciary she has gotten to know Skoglund, describing her as hardworking, intelligent, candid and frank.
“She’s a good person to work with on a team,” Gabel added. “It’s going to be a big change when Justice Skoglund leaves.”
