CHARLESTON — While Congress considers the impeachment process for President Donald Trump, justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will meet this morning in conference to vote on whether to allow the West Virginia Legislature’s appeal of a state-level halt to judicial impeachment to continue.

Eight justices, excluding Chief Justice John Roberts, will meet this morning in Washington, D.C., to vote on what cases move on to oral arguments before the full court.

One of those cases is a combined appeal filed by both the West Virginia Senate and House of Delegates regarding a decision by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals which halted the impeachment trials of Justice Margaret Workman and former justices Allen Loughry and Robin Davis.

In a 3-2 decision made Oct. 11, 2018, a state Supreme Court bench made up entirely of circuit court judges ruled the House did not follow the impeachment rules adopted to impeach Workman, Justice Beth Walker and former justices Allen Loughry and Robin Davis. The court also argued the House violated the separation of powers by citing the Canons of Judicial Ethics in several of the impeachment charges.

The House started an impeachment inquiry of the sitting justices of the state Supreme Court at the end of June 2018 — Justices Margaret Workman, Beth Walker, and former justices Loughry and Davis.

Former Justice Menis Ketchum resigned in July before the start of the impeachment investigation by the House Judiciary Committee and later pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of West Virginia for his use of a court vehicle and fuel card for personal use.

After several weeks of testimony and evidence, the House adopted 11 articles of impeachment in Aug. 13, 2018 for waste, fraud, and abuse. The charges were spread out among Loughry, Workman, Walker, and Davis, who resigned the day after the impeachment vote.

Only Walker, who now serves as chief justice, faced an impeachment trial at the beginning of October. She was acquitted and censured in the one catch-all impeachment charge that accused all four justices of maladministration.

Workman chose to file suit against the state Senate to stop her upcoming impeachment trial, arguing the House failed to adopt a statement of facts laying out its case against her as was required in the rules of impeachment. She also argued that several of the articles of impeachment were based on interpretations of the Judicial Code of Conduct, which the Legislature had no right to interpret.

After the remaining justices recused themselves, a panel of appointed circuit judges heard her case. While two of the acting justices agreed there were issues with the impeachment process in the House, they believed it was up to the Legislature to fix the issues.

The other three acting justices sided with Workman’s arguments, agreeing to halt her impeachment trial, which was scheduled for Oct. 15, 2018, as well as the trials for Davis and Loughry.

The House filed suit in the U.S. Supreme Court in December, followed by the Senate in March after the 2019 regular session. Neither body plans to restart impeachment proceedings against the state Supreme Court but is only seeking a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court as to whether the state Constitution’s separation of powers between the branches was violated by the state Supreme Court’s decision.

Loughry, the former chief justice whose excessive office spending, use of supreme court property for personal uses, and personal use of vehicles for trips to conferences and his home county which spawned the impeachment investigations of the full court, was convicted of 11 charges in U.S. District Court in October 2018 and is now serving time in federal prison.