In the latest chapter of a long-running dispute between the Republican-controlled Legislature and the state's Democratic attorney general, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over which side controls money from multi-state settlements.

The post Wisconsin Supreme Court hears arguments in political struggle over state settlement funds appeared first on WPR.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a case that centers on a dispute between state Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Legislature about who controls money the Department of Justice is awarded as part of lawsuit settlements. 

The suit is yet another challenge to the lame duck laws Republican legislators and outgoing Gov. Scott Walker enacted in 2018 in the days before the end of Walker’s term and another instance of the Supreme Court stepping in to enforce the separation of powers between Wisconsin’s executive and legislative branches. 

Under several provisions of the lame duck laws, the Legislature sought to limit the executive branch’s authority to spend money. The Supreme Court previously struck down provisions that required the approval of legislative committees before executive agencies could act. 

The Legislature argues that under the law, the attorney general is required to put money from a financial settlement into the state’s general fund, which legislators control through the normal budget process. Kaul argues he can put the settlement funds in accounts controlled by DOJ but doesn’t have the authority to spend those funds without approval from the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee. 

Initially filed in Polk County Circuit Court in 2021, when a conservative majority controlled the Supreme Court, the case appeared in the 2nd District Court of Appeals in 2024 where a 2-1 decision reversed the circuit court’s ruling that Kaul could direct settlement funds into DOJ accounts. 

That majority opinion was authored by Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative judge now running for a seat on the Supreme Court. 

“Despite the legislation expressly designed to bring all settlement funds under legislative control and despite the simple and plain language of that legislation, the Attorney General has continued to act precisely in the manner which the Legislature sought to end,” Lazar wrote.

Generally, conservative legal interpretations of the law involve strict adherence to the exact language of a statute while liberal legal interpretations take into account intent. In this case, that typical structure is flipped. The DOJ argues that it is following the exact language of the law by directing the settlement money into accounts for specific DOJ programs that fall under the umbrella of the general fund and not spending those funds without approval from JFC. DOJ also notes that historically, Wisconsin attorneys general have had broad authority to spend settlement money. 

DOJ attorney Hannah Jurss argued to the Court Wednesday that it isn’t DOJ’s fault the Legislature wasn’t precise enough when crafting the law — though the law has effectively cut off Kaul’s ability to direct the expenditure of settlement funds. 

“We now do not have discretion to expend those monies. So if the intention was to prevent the attorney general’s expenditure of settlement funds as properly understood, it did that,” Jurss said. “There are now monies sitting there that are left to the attorney general’s discretion that the attorney general cannot spend. Instead, I think what the court is seeing in the Legislature’s arguments are unsupported assertions about some sort of broader intent that, frankly, have no support whatsoever in the text of the statutes, in statutory history.” 

Jurss added that a similar structure guides the budget statutes across state government, so if the Court sided with the Legislature, much of the existing budget framework would be affected. She noted programs in the Departments of Tourism and Military Affairs that would be hit. 

“This Court should not cut the wire on the budget statute structure across Wisconsin statutes simply for the Legislature to accomplish its preferred outcome here,” she said. 

Misha Tseytlin, the attorney for the Legislature — whose former position as state solicitor general was cut by the Legislature in the lame duck laws — argued the Court should side with the Legislature to stop Kaul from finding ways around the law. 

“Because the attorney general had found his way around the Legislature’s prior attempt,” Tseytlin said. “I know there’s not a lot of sympathy for the Legislature from the courts, but imagine how frustrating it is. You’re trying to rein in the attorney general, you’re trying to get them to stop these practices, you enact this JFC provision, and they find a way around that.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice first elected in 2007 announced Monday that she will not seek a third 10-year term next year, giving liberals another chance to expand their majority as cases affecting redistricting, union rights, school funding and other hot button issues await.

Justice Annette Ziegler, 62, becomes the second conservative justice in as many years to decide against seeking reelection after liberals took majority control of Wisconsin’s highest court in 2023. Liberals held onto their majority last year in a race that broke national spending records and saw billionaire Elon Musk traveling to the state to hand out $1 million checks to conservative voters.

There’s another election on April 7 for the open seat caused by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley’s decision not to run for reelection. The liberal candidate, Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, has outraised her conservative opponent, fellow Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, allowing her to spend more on television ads in what so far has been a low-profile race given that the court’s majority is not on the line.

Liberals are seeking to win their fourth Supreme Court race in a row dating back to 2020 and solidify their hold on the court.

Ziegler’s decision to step down means there will be another open race next year. If liberals win this year, their majority would increase to 5-2, and in 2027 they could grow it to 6-1. If the conservative candidate wins this year, the liberal majority would remain 4-3, and next year the best conservatives could do would be to keep it at 4-3.

Ziegler consistently sided with fellow conservatives justices, including in 2020 when the court fell one vote short of overturning President Donald Trump’s election loss that year. Ziegler was in the minority after a conservative swing justice sided with liberals.

Cases expected to come before the court in coming years include challenges to congressional district maps, the future of a state law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers and an effort to increase spending on public schools.

Liberals have struck down a state abortion ban law and ordered new legislative maps since taking control of the court, fueling Democrats’ hopes of capturing a majority this November.

Ziegler, who was chief justice between 2021 and 2025, previously served as a circuit court judge in Washington County for 10 years.

“Now is the right time for me to step away to spend more time with my husband, kids and grandkids,” she said in a statement.

“I am incredibly proud that in all my elections I had support from a broad spectrum of legal, civic, law enforcement and political leaders — both Democrats and Republicans — who believed in my commitment to fairness, ethics and the rule of law,” Ziegler said.

The election to replace Ziegler is April 6, 2027.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler won’t seek reelection is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that highlights how judges can apply different interpretations of the law and constitution to suit their ideological viewpoints.

The case resulted from disagreements between the Republican-led Legislature and Attorney General Josh Kaul following the 2018 lame-duck session that limited the powers of the incoming Democratic administration. 

The lawsuit, which the Legislature filed in 2021 when there was a conservative majority on the state Supreme Court, focuses on who has oversight of the dollars the state receives from legal settlements. The Legislature argues the 2018 law requires the attorney general to put money from a financial settlement in the general fund, which state lawmakers control. Kaul argues that he can put settlement funds in accounts that the Department of Justice oversees and still comply with the law.

In December 2024, the 2nd District Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling reversed part of a circuit court decision that said Kaul could continue to direct settlement dollars into DOJ-controlled accounts.

The Appeals Court opinion was written by Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative who is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April against liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor. Lazar ruled the language in the 2018 law aligns with the Legislature’s arguments that settlement dollars belong in the general fund. 

“Despite the legislation expressly designed to bring all settlement funds under legislative control and despite the simple and plain language of that legislation, the Attorney General has continued to act precisely in the manner which the Legislature sought to end,” Lazar wrote.

But in a dissent, retiring Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer, the only liberal on the Waukesha-based District 2 Court of Appeals, criticized Lazar for basing her decision on what the Legislature intended, rather than a strict reading of various clauses in the law that may give the attorney general wiggle room.

The oral arguments this week follow a series of decisions in recent years on lawsuits challenging the separation of powers between the Legislature and the executive branch. In June, the court unanimously struck down a portion of the 2018-era lame-duck laws that required the attorney general to receive approval from the Legislature’s budget-writing committee to settle most civil cases. For the 4-3 divided liberal-majority court, the rulings in these cases have shown agreement among the justices over the need for clear boundaries between the core powers of the branches of government, legal experts said. 

Where this latest lawsuit differs is the debate seems focused more on the language of the law than the separation of powers, said Chad Oldfather, a professor at the Marquette University Law School. Typically the conservative approach to statutory interpretation has been to focus on the basic meaning of the law while the liberal approach has been to examine the law’s intent. That has been the opposite in this case, Oldfather said.  

“The advocates are kind of flipping a little bit the usual ideology of the statutory interpretation approach,” Oldfather said. “And all that’s going on while it’s clear that there are some people on the court who want to fundamentally shift the way the court does statutory interpretation. So there’s a real interesting mix of issues going on in this case.” 

The law in question has been wrapped up in a yearslong debate over separation of powers that has made its way to justices in recent years, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. In many of those cases, the Supreme Court opinions have shown the justices interested in balanced branches of government. 

“There seems to be an inclination to reinstate greater separation of powers between the branches and preserve the important roles of various actors, whether that’s the attorney general or the governor or the Legislature,” Godar said. 

For example, in a 6-1 decision in 2024, with Justice Annette Ziegler dissenting, the court ruled the Legislature’s Republican-led budget-writing committee could not block spending by the Department of Natural Resources for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund. 

“While the legislature’s motivation for overseeing the public fisc may be well-intentioned, fundamentally, the legislature may not execute the law,” Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of the conservative bloc, wrote in the majority opinion. “The people gave the executive alone this power.”

In the 7-0 decision last June on the Legislature’s approval of the attorney general’s civil case settlements, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that the constitution does not give lawmakers the ability to execute the law when there are financial decisions. 

“If the Legislature has a constitutional interest in the execution of the laws every time an executive action involves money, there would be virtually no area where the Legislature could not insert itself into the execution of the law,” Hagedorn wrote. 

There are still areas of disagreement among the court in these types of cases. Last July, the court reached a 4-3 decision in a lawsuit between Gov. Tony Evers and the Legislature, which determined 2018 lame-duck legislation that gave a legislative committee the ability to delay rules and policy changes from executive agencies was unconstitutional.

In that case, the court’s four liberal justices were in the majority. Hagedorn wrote an opinion both concurring and dissenting with the majority’s decision, while Bradley and Ziegler dissented.

“The majority has created a grave constitutional imbalance by strictly construing, and thus confining, the constitutional powers of the legislative branch while not doing the same when it comes to the power of the executive branch,” Ziegler wrote.

Latest Wisconsin Supreme Court case flips the script on which judges strictly interpret the law is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Justice Annette Ziegler, a conservative who has sat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court since 2007 and served four years as chief justice, will not seek reelection to the court next year.

The post Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler to retire appeared first on WPR.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler announced Monday that she will not run for a third term in 2027, setting up another open race for the seat. 

Ziegler, 62, plans to serve out the rest of her term but won’t run in the April 2027 race.

“After three decades on the bench, now is the right time for me to step away to spend more time with my husband, kids and grandkids,” Ziegler said in a statement. “I will, therefore, not be seeking reelection to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2027.” 

Ziegler was first elected to the Court in 2007. Ziegler won a second term in 2017 in an unusual race where there was no opposition, becoming the only justice to not draw an opponent over the past two decades.

“It has been the honor of my lifetime to serve as judge and justice for the past 30 years,” Ziegler said. “I will be forever grateful to the voters who elected me twice in Washington County and then twice to serve on our state’s highest court.”

Ziegler’s announcement comes about a month ahead of this year’s state Supreme Court race, which is open following the decision of her fellow conservative colleague, Justice Rebecca Bradley, to not seek reelection this year. 

Appeals court judge and former Democratic state Assembly member Chris Taylor and Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative, will face each other next month for that seat. 

The retirements of the two conservative justices comes after liberals won the majority on the Court in 2023 and held it in last year’s race.

Recent Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin have brought national attention and record spending for the nominally nonpartisan seats with the ideological balance of the Court at stake. The 2026  Supreme Court race has not received as much attention or spending with the liberal majority assured regardless of the outcome.  A victory for Taylor next month would increase the number of liberal justices on the Court, locking in a  5-2 liberal majority until 2030.

When Ziegler’s seat is up in 2027, liberals will likely look to extend their majority while conservatives will be looking to claw back some ground. 

“While I will not be a candidate next year, my appreciation for the people of Wisconsin and the judicial system I have been privileged to serve in remains as strong as ever,” Ziegler said. “I look forward to finishing out the rest of my term on the Court and handing the baton to a new justice in 2027.”

Ziegler served as the chief justice from 2021 to 2025. She was the second justice to be elected to the position after a 2015 constitutional amendment made it an elected position rather than one selected based on seniority. 

When the Court flipped to a liberal majority in 2023 for the first time in 15 years, the liberal members voted to weaken the powers of the chief justice, putting some of the powers under the control of a three-member administrative committee and making a series of changes to the Court’s internal operating procedures. Ziegler at the time called the move an overreach by “rogue justices.”

Ziegler worked as a private lawyer, an assistant U.S attorney and as Washington County Circuit Court judge, a position to which she was appointed by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, before she was elected to the Supreme Court. Ziegler earned her law degree from Marquette University. 

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race could have spurred another bank-breaking election cycle. Instead, national super donors have kept their pocketbooks closed, and with only a month until the election, the liberal candidate appears to be sailing ahead in contributions.

Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, the liberal candidate, has raised more than $3.8 million over the past year, compared to the $438,000 conservative candidate Maria Lazar, who is also an appellate judge, has brought in. 

The low-key nature of this year’s race is a sharp reversal from the 2025 state Supreme Court contest, in which the candidate campaigns, political parties, outside interest groups and mega billionaire Elon Musk combined to spend a record $144.5 million on the contest. Brad Schimel lost to Susan Crawford, maintaining the liberal majority on the court.

But the financial landscape of the election is not a done deal, both camps say.

“We can’t take anything for granted on our side,” said Sam Roecker, a Taylor adviser. “We know that there are supporters of (Lazar’s) who have the capacity to dump a lot of money in this race, and we saw what happened last time around when tens of millions of dollars got poured in.”

And as more voters start paying attention to the race, Lazar has a “window of opportunity” in the weeks leading up to the April 7 election, Republican strategist Bill McCoshen said.

“The truth is a lot of folks on the conservative side thought that our candidate wasn’t going to have a very strong chance a month ago. Now we think she could actually win,” McCoshen said.

Without big spending, this year’s state Supreme Court campaigns aren’t breaking through to voters like they did in 2025. Just 6% of voters said they had heard a lot about the election, compared to 39% at the same time last year, according to a Marquette Law School Poll released last month.

Despite Taylor’s wide fundraising advantage and outsize TV advertising, about two-thirds of voters are undecided, the same poll found. Taylor polled 5 percentage points higher than Lazar among voters who have made a decision, narrowly outside the margin of error.

“The real point is it’s not getting through to voters, or voters haven’t tuned into it. But you know, that’s more than a six to one greater awareness a year ago than it is today,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “I’m not saying that we’ll go into election day without anybody having heard anything, but it was an earlier campaign last year and with more resources behind it.”

Generally, liberal candidates have an advantage in spring judicial elections, Franklin said. College graduates and older voters, who have shifted leftward over the past several decades, are the primary voting blocs in spring court elections.

The stakes are different this cycle. The court’s liberal majority is secure. The winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. Still, losing this race would make it even harder for conservatives to regain power on the state’s high court. If they lose this year, they would have to retain the seats held by conservatives Annette Ziegler next year and Brian Hagedorn in 2029 and then flip seats held by liberals Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky in 2028 and 2030.

“Last year’s was to determine which ideological faction will have control of a majority of the court, and this year’s won’t change that. This year’s is to replace a conservative on a court that leans liberal already,” said Jeff Mandell, the co-founder of the progressive organization Law Forward.

Janine Geske. a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, said that liberal voters have been galvanized to turn out for judicial elections by hot-button national issues like abortion and gerrymandering that have taken center stage in the state’s highest court. 

“Those issues became really the issues on the ballot versus the candidates themselves. As a result, I think we had more progressive candidates,” Geske said.

It’s a playbook that was adopted by Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who won Wisconsin’s high-profile race in 2023 on a platform of sharing her “values” regarding political issues that were likely to come before the court.

Lazar just might find success with that strategy, too, McCoshen said.

“Judge Lazar is doing a better job of at least tipping her hat to what her conservative leanings may be so that voters have a better understanding of what they’re voting for,” McCoshen said.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

One year after Elon Musk’s Wisconsin spending blitz, the state’s Supreme Court race falls quiet is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Like many churches, Christ Presbyterian Church on Madison’s near east side displays “welcome” banners outside its front doors. Unlike most churches, those doors are always locked to protect the clients and staff of the Community Immigration Law Center, which works out of offices in the church. 

The locked doors are just one of the many ways CILC has been forced to change as the administration of President Donald Trump seeks to massively decrease the immigrant population in the United States. 

The names of staff members are no longer publicly available on the organization’s website. Legal clinics to provide advice to asylum seekers are no longer being held because the administration has effectively stopped the asylum process. 

Already bursting at the seams of its office spaces in the church, CILC is working this year to grow its staff from eight lawyers and four paralegals to 10 lawyers and 16 paralegals in an effort to fill the gaping need across Wisconsin for immigration attorneys. 

The organization has also beefed up its rapid response capabilities, so when a community organization such as Voces de la Frontera hears about an immigration arrest, that person and their family can be quickly connected with an attorney through CILC. 

Grant Sovern, one of CILC’s co-founders, says that until the last few months, the organization was doing pretty well keeping up with cases — about 300 detention cases since Trump took office.  But with the Trump administration reversing protective orders that had been issued under President Joe Biden and continuing to upend longstanding policies, reinterpret rules and threaten the arrest of new classes of immigrants, CILC needs to do its best to make sure the government is adhering to the law and the Constitution, he adds. 

“The only chance we have for due process is applying the legal system, because the Constitution is still almost working in most of the cases,” Sovern says. “But you can’t just do that on your own. And in immigration, that’s more true because the federal government has a ton of discretion in how they apply those laws and the day-to-day workings of this immigration court.” 

CILC’s legal director, Aissa Olivarez, grew up in the Rio Grande valley near the U.S.-Mexico border. After five years teaching first grade, she attended law school at UW-Madison with the intention of practicing immigration law. She has stayed in Wisconsin because she saw a greater need here than in her home state of Texas, where there’s already robust infrastructure to assist immigrants. 

Growing up Mexican-American near the “militarized border” prepared her for all the tactics that Trump’s ICE has spread across the country, she says. But over the last year, the fear that ICE has caused in Wisconsin’s immigrant communities — particularly as surges of federal agents in neighboring Minnesota and Illinois drew headlines — has put a heavy burden on the CILC staff to be there for their clients. 

“How do we make this sustainable from an emotional point of view?” Olivarez says. She notes that she and her staff are often the first people detained immigrants meet with after their arrest. “And so oftentimes we get a long story or a lot of information that we may not need, but we know how important it is to listen, to lend an ear and to get the facts so that we can complete our mission of making sure that people get strong and good legal advice, but also the mission of just being a human in that space, and providing individuals with the space to talk, with the ability to discuss and ask questions and bring humanity.” 

But, she says, that can mean “we are carrying a very large emotional load, especially watching the way that the dismantling of people’s rights and the dismantling of our immigration courts is happening. There’s a lot of grief involved, and a lot of grief that we have to navigate, knowing oftentimes what people are facing, what they’re going through, and also worry for our own families.” 

Olivarez says it can be daunting to face the caseload, knowing there are about 1,000 days left in Trump’s term, understanding the pace is not likely to let up and trying to avoid burning out. But she feels CILC is playing an essential role for migrant communities across the state. 

“Can we keep up with that in an emotional way? Because the stakes are so high, because it means permanent separation from a family member, permanent exile from the United States, that we are well enough so that we can do the work. But we also haven’t faced this as an organization before,” she says. “And it’s really easy — because of all of the stories we hear and the people we see in these facilities — to lose hope. But I can tell you, the people who are not losing hope are the people who are being impacted. You know, they want to keep fighting. They stay strong through months and years of detention, and it’s a complete privilege and honor to be able to be trusted by the community in that way.” 

Natalia Lucak, the daughter of Czech immigrants, is CILC’s senior program manager. Lucak previously ran the organization’s asylum clinics, assisting asylum applicants with getting the proper paperwork filed to the right agencies. 

Now, she’s working with immigrants in Wisconsin — many of whom have come to the country with legal status only to lose that status because of Trump administration policy changes — to prepare for what happens if ICE arrests them. 

When Lucak started working in immigration law during President Barack Obama’s second term, “the goal and the hope was to help people stay here,” she says. Now she feels like she’s had her “wings clipped” because her job has become all about managing and assessing risk. 

Her job has become “preparing people for the possibility of being detained and advising them that you know what could happen if they’re detained, the likelihood of success in their case,” Lucak says.

“Now it’s just a very different calculus, especially when I talk to families, and as they think about, you know, what would happen to their children if they’re detained?” she says. “How would prolonged detention impact the family? And how much risk are they willing to take to stay here and just hope that things are okay when we are seeing increased detention numbers across the country and certainly in Wisconsin in the last few weeks.” 

For the first time, Lucak says she’s helping families weigh if it’s better to leave the country on their own before they get arrested and deported. There is a lot for her clients to weigh, all while they’re scared for the safety of their loved ones.  

“This administration is random. It’s just by luck that you’ve avoided [arrest] so far And that luck may run out, and who knows when? And so let’s plan,” she says. “People are crying often doing these consultations, and especially if they have kids, maybe they have U.S. citizen kids.”

The questions can be endless. 

“I’ve had various clients who have kids who are special needs, and so they’re U.S. citizens,” Lucak says. “They’re accessing certain programs here. And you’re kind of deciding, do we leave on our own? Do we uproot? Do I risk being deported and being separated from my child? Would my child stay here? My child go with me? How would my child come with me? Like even preparing, does your child have a passport? Like, does your child, if you’re gonna leave, or if you’re detained and deported, and your child needs to follow, that child needs a passport. There are all these documents you need to get in line. And so it’s really just like, do you have a family plan, who’s gonna pick up your kid if you’re detained there at school?” 

Even amid all the uncertainty, all the stress and the burden of being a small staff working out of some church offices to thwart the full weight of the federal government, Lucak says she and her colleagues plan to just keep trying to figure it out. 

“We are gonna find ways to fight and make them follow the law, make them follow due process, make them do these things,” she says. “And you know, they do have our back up to a wall because of all the power that they hold, especially when it comes to immigration.”

She adds that the staff has to be nimble “and not hold being too precious about things that worked under Biden. Like it’s not going to work anymore, and we just have to do it differently.”

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday demanding the administration refund businesses that paid tariffs to import goods into the United States under authority the Supreme Court has ruled the president never held. 

“The American people — small business owners, importers, manufacturers, and the consumers who ultimately bore the cost of these illegal taxes — deserve better than this stonewalling,” the group wrote. “This money does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to the businesses and individuals you illegally taxed.”

The Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 20 that President Donald Trump wrongly instituted tariffs under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, writing “that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

Trump held a press conference later that day declaring he would institute tariffs under other authorities that he and members of his administration believe Congress has granted the president. But he didn’t give a clear answer about whether the federal government would refund the businesses that paid IEEPA tariffs.

“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” Trump said at the time. “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”

Senate Democrats’ letter says the Trump administration “collected over $130 billion in illegal taxes and then refused — with a smile and a shrug — to give it back.”

Democrats wrote in the letter the administration must tell U.S. Customs and Border Protection “to begin processing automatic refunds for all tariffs and customs duties unlawfully collected under IEEPA since January 20, 2025.”

The Trump administration, they wrote, should release a timeline within 90 days for when it would begin those refunds. 

The letter was signed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Whip Dick Durbin, Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Delaware Sens. Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, Rhode Island Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock.

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

A new poll shows former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has more name recognition than any other candidate for governor, but he isn't Democratic voters' clear first choice.

The post Marquette poll: Hong, Barnes top Democratic primary for governor, but most voters undecided appeared first on WPR.

A coalition of Wisconsin environmental advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Monday challenging an administrative law judge’s decision to uphold the Department of Natural Resource’s permit approval to reroute the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline across northern Wisconsin. 

The petition, filed in Iron County Circuit Court by Clean Wisconsin and Midwest Environmental Advocates on behalf of the Sierra Club, 350 Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, argues that the administrative law judge ignored extensive evidence that the pipeline reroute will damage local waterways. 

A similar lawsuit has also been filed by the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The tribe for years has fought against the pipeline, which currently runs across its land. The reroute is happening because a federal judge previously ruled the pipeline must be moved off tribal land, but the tribe argues the new proposed route will continue to harm its water resources. 

The administrative judge upheld the DNR’s permit decision after six weeks of hearings last year. The petitions from the environmental groups and the tribe move the case from the administrative legal process to the state’s court system. Separately, a challenge has been made against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Line 5 permit decisions. 

“We are more committed than ever to protecting Wisconsin’s waters from the irreversible harm this project threatens to cause. We believe the administrative ruling incorrectly decided critical legal and factual issues, and we are confident that our efforts to hold DNR and Enbridge accountable to Wisconsin’s environmental laws will ultimately be vindicated,” MEA Senior Staff Attorney Rob Lee said in a statement.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will hear a significant climate lawsuit in which oil companies are seeking to avoid being tried in state court. 

The fate of several dozen climate lawsuits brought against oil companies by state and local governments could hinge on the decision, which could determine whether the cases can be tried in state court. The suits seek to force oil companies to pay billions of dollars to help governments grapple with the costs of climate-related damages, such as natural disasters, rising sea levels and drought.

Exxon Mobil Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc., which have been sued by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, argue the case should be dismissed because they followed national regulations when extracting and selling their products. Oil companies have claimed that federal rules around greenhouse gas emissions should preempt efforts to sue them under state laws.

Some oil companies have previously attempted to have climate cases removed to federal courts, petitions that have been denied by federal circuit courts and the Supreme Court.

But the roughly three dozen state and local governments that have sued oil companies in recent years argue that the cases belong in state court. Many of the lawsuits cite state consumer protection and fraud laws, along with evidence that the companies knew about the risks of climate change while downplaying it in public.

“We had hoped that the Supreme Court would let the decision of the lower courts rest, but we’re also confident in our case and looking forward for the chance to have it heard,” Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said in an interview. “I do think it’s a significant case. If the motion to dismiss is not granted, then we can get into discovery and learn exactly what Exxon and Suncor knew and when they knew it.”

The states of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont, as well as many more cities, counties and tribes, have all filed lawsuits against oil companies over climate change. 

If the Supreme Court were to rule that the Boulder case is preempted by federal law, it would be a major win for oil companies, who have long claimed that national regulations such as the Clean Air Act should supersede state laws. Such a ruling could also prevent many of the other cases from moving forward in state courts.

The case could also be complicated by the Trump administration’s recent repeal of the endangerment finding, the scientific determination that underpinned the federal government’s regulations of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. With the feds stepping back from climate regulation, some observers believe the oil companies will have a harder time claiming that state lawsuits fall under the scope of federal policy.

In a written statement to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prior to the repeal of the endangerment finding, a group of investor-owned electric utilities raised that concern. The Edison Electric Institute, in its letter to the agency, said that federal greenhouse gas emissions helped “protect the power sector” from legal claims by “displacing” lawsuits over companies’ role in contributing to climate change. 

“Should EPA remove its regulation of [greenhouse gases], it increases the likelihood that environmental non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups, citizen groups, and other parties will seek to bring new tort suits and other litigation to test the bounds of continued [Clean Air Act] displacement of federal common law,” the group wrote.

Editor’s Note: The story has been corrected to reflect that the Supreme Court in 2023 denied oil companies’ attempts to remove the case to federal court.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org. 

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to keep tariffs in place using different authorities after the Supreme Court ruled he exceeded his power under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act. 

During the afternoon press conference in the White House briefing room, Trump repeatedly criticized the six justices who wrote “that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing and I’m ashamed of certain members of the Court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” he said. 

Trump’s disdain of Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor did not stop there. 

He said the justices’ opposition to his tariff policies meant they were a “disgrace to our nation” as well as “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh wrote dissenting opinions. Justice Samuel Alito and Thomas joined Kavanaugh’s dissent.

Trump appointed Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh during his first term.

But, Trump said, the ruling would not change the tariffs he has implemented under IEEPA since he planned to institute the same tax on goods coming into the country under different laws. 

“The good news is that there are methods, practices, statutes and authorities as recognized by the entire Court in this terrible decision, and also as recognized by Congress, which they refer to, that are even stronger than the IEEPA tariffs available to me as president of the United States,” he said. 

Trump said he would sign an order later in the day to “impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged.”

Trump didn’t commit to returning the tens of billions of dollars the U.S. government has collected from IEEPA tariffs, saying the ruling didn’t address that issue. 

“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” Trump said. “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”

Trump said he didn’t plan to ask Congress to pass any new laws or give the president broader tariff authority. 

“I don’t have to. I have the right to do tariffs. And I’ve always had the right to do tariffs. It has all been approved by Congress, so there’s no reason to do it,” he said. “All we’re doing is we’re going through a little bit more complicated process, not complicated very much, but a little more complicated than what we had. And we’ll be able to take in more tariffs.” 

Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress, which will likely be attended by many, if not all, of the Supreme Court justices, on Tuesday night. 

Trump said he “couldn’t care less” whether the justices attend the speech, which is held in the House chamber. He said they are “barely” still invited, even though the president, who leads the executive branch, doesn’t hold the authority to exclude guests from either chamber of Congress, which makes up the separate but equal legislative branch.  

Justices can, however, choose not to attend. 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump’s trade agenda Friday, ruling the tariffs he issued under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act are illegal.

In a 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said Congress alone holds the power to tax in almost all circumstances. The Trump administration’s argument that trade deficits and illegal drug imports granted it emergency power to levy tariffs was not justified, the court said. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods.

The Trump administration had argued that a provision in the law, known as IEEPA, that said the executive branch could “regulate” imports empowered the president to levy tariffs.

“Based on two words separated by 16 others (in the law)—‘regulate’ and ‘importation’—the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” Roberts wrote. “Those words cannot bear such weight.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Roberts’ opinion. 

Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh filed dissenting opinions. Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito joined Kavanaugh’s.

Kavanaugh’s dissent accepted the administration’s reading of the law and said it was not the justices’ role to decide a policy matter that has “generated vigorous” debate. 

“The sole legal question here is whether, under IEEPA, tariffs are a means to ‘regulate . . . importation,’” he wrote. “Statutory text, history, and precedent demonstrate that the answer is clearly yes: Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation.”

New tariffs

Trump blasted the ruling at an afternoon press conference. Asked if he regretted nominating Gorsuch and Barrett, he said the decision was “an embarrassment to their families.”

He said the judges were “being politically correct” and catering to special interests rather than fairly interpreting the law.

He also said he would impose global 10% tariffs under a provision of the Trade Act of 1974, which  allows the president to unilaterally apply tariffs for up to 150 days.

“Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122 over and above our normal tariffs already being charged,” he said.

Tariffs were an important tool to balance the country’s trade and hold leverage over other countries, he said. 

‘Unchecked’ presidential authority

In the opinion of the court, Roberts wrote that Trump’s expansive use of the emergency tariff powers would upend the balance of powers between branches of government.

The administration’s position would empower the president “to unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs,” simply by declaring an economic emergency, Roberts wrote. Further, that declaration would be unreviewable and could be overturned only by a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress.

That view “would replace the longstanding executive-legislative collaboration over trade policy with unchecked Presidential policymaking,” he wrote.

When Congress intends to convey that kind of power to the executive branch, it generally does so in uncertain terms, Roberts said.

“In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” he wrote. 

The government’s argument that IEEPA authorized that power, “falls short,” the opinion said. 

The chief justice added that it was telling that in the nearly 50 years since the IEEPA became law, no other president has read such broad powers into it.

What to do about the taxes that were collected?

The ruling opens a new debate about how to handle tariff revenue that the government has already collected since Trump first imposed the IEEPA tariffs a year ago.

Kavanaugh noted the likely confusion the issue would cause.

“The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers,” he wrote. “But that process is likely to be a ‘mess,’ as was acknowledged at oral argument.”

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and prominent economic liberal, said that revenue should be sent to small businesses that were harmed by the imposition of tariffs.

“Any refunds from the federal government should end up in the pockets of the millions of Americans and small businesses that were illegally cheated out of their hard-earned money by Donald Trump,” she wrote in a statement.

Main Street Alliance, a national trade group representing small businesses, called for the revenue collected under the tariffs to be returned to small businesses.

“If the authority was unlawful, the collections were unlawful,” Executive Director Richard Trent said in a statement. “Every penny taken from small businesses under this framework should be returned.”

Attention turns to Congress

With the court ruling that taxing power lies with Congress, efforts to codify the tariffs Trump had applied could become a priority for Republican lawmakers.

“No one can deny that the President’s use of tariffs has brought in billions of dollars and created immense leverage for America’s trade strategy and for securing strong, reciprocal America-first trade agreements with countries that had been taking advantage of American workers for decades,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, wrote on social media. “Congress and the Administration will determine the best path forward in the coming weeks.”

Adrian Smith, a Nebraska Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee’s subpanel on trade, said Congress should work with the president to legislate tariffs.

“Nebraska’s farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers create world-leading products and deserve reliable access to global markets,” he said. “I am committed to working with the administration to deliver long-term certainty through comprehensive and enforceable trade agreements. The President has made clear his intention to use every available tool to secure strong deals, but only Congress can ensure that these agreements provide lasting stability beyond any single administration.”

Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, though, said in a social media post that the ruling would severely hamper efforts to rebalance trade, and called for Congress to codify the tariffs.

“SCOTUS’s outrageous ruling handcuffs our fight against unfair trade that has devastated American workers for decades,” he wrote. “These tariffs protected jobs, revived manufacturing, and forced cheaters like China to pay up. Now globalists win, factories (sic) investments may reverse, and American workers lose again. This betrayal must be reversed and Republicans must get to work immediately on a reconciliation bill to codify the tariffs that had made our country the hottest country on earth!”

Democratic lawmakers praised the court’s decision, while blasting the tariffs as a matter of policy.

“This is a win for the wallets of every American consumer,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “Trump’s chaotic and illegal tariff tax made life more expensive and our economy more unstable. Families paid more. Small businesses and farmers got squeezed. Markets swung wildly. We’ve said from day one: a president cannot ignore Congress and unilaterally slap tariffs on Americans. That overreach failed.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, called the decision “a win for farmers, small businesses, and hardworking, middle-class families across the country,” he said in a statement. 

“Trump’s illegal and chaotic tariffs have harmed American consumers and businesses, leaving them to foot the bill for rising prices due to Trumpflation,” the Oregon Democrat added. “While Trump continues his ‘families lose, billionaires win’ agenda, we’re using every tool at our disposal to fight back against his reckless policies and build an economy where families thrive, and billionaires pay their fair share.”

Arguments were heard in November

The justices heard arguments in early November in what was the first major case of the second Trump term to move beyond the court’s emergency docket and be heard on the merits of the case.

Small businesses and Democratic state attorneys general led the legal challenges against Trump’s tariffs in the two separate cases, consolidated before the Supreme Court. They alleged Trump usurped taxing power, which belongs to Congress as outlined in Article I of the Constitution.

Victor Schwartz, founder and president of the family-owned, New York-based wine and spirits importer VOS Selections led the small business plaintiffs, which included a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.

State attorneys general who sued included those from Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon.

Two Illinois-based toy makers that primarily manufacture products in Asia filed a separate challenge.

For nearly three hours on Nov. 5, the justices dissected the language of IEEPA, a 1970s-era sanctions law that Trump invoked during the first year of his term in a series of emergency declarations and proclamations triggering import taxes on goods from nearly every country.

The high-profile case drew Cabinet officials to the court, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. 

Members of Congress also attended. Among the crowded rows were U.S. House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

‘Liberation day’

Trump began imposing tariffs under IEEPA via executive order in February and March on products from China, Canada and Mexico, declaring the countries responsible for illegal fentanyl smuggled into the United States.

The president escalated the emergency tariffs April 2, which he dubbed “liberation day,” when he declared trade imbalances a national emergency. In addition to a new baseline 10% global tariff, Trump announced hefty additional duties on products from countries that export more goods to the U.S. than they import from U.S. suppliers.

The White House calculations baffled economists, as the administration proposed steep duties on close trading partners — including 20% on products from the European Union, 25% on South Korea, 32% on Taiwan and 46% on Vietnam. 

Inexplicably he also announced a 50% tariffs on goods from the landlocked, 11,000-square-mile African nation of Lesotho, and 10% on the Heard and McDonald Islands, only inhabited by penguins and seals.

Trump’s announcement crashed markets, wiping trillions of dollars away in just a matter of days. He relented and delayed most of the tariffs, but escalated a trade war with China — shooting up the levy to 125%, and eventually to 145%.

The administration’s trade war with China cooled a bit in May, but left the rate on some products at an effective 55%.

Trump maintains his tariffs have forced the hand of other governments to invest in the U.S. in exchange for lower tariffs. For example, Trump officials claimed victory in a framework deal with Japan that lowered duties on Japanese products to 15%, from 25%, with a promise from Japan to invest $550 billion in the U.S.

As recently as late August, Trump imposed an extra 25% tariff on goods imported from India, bringing the total tariffs on Indian products to 50%, because of the country’s usage of Russian oil. 

In early August, Trump slapped a 40% tax on all Brazilian goods after he disagreed with the country’s prosecution of its former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup to remain in power in 2022.

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar says she wants disagreements on the Court to be more respectful. 

At a Tuesday forum hosted by the Marquette University School of Law, Lazar attempted to distance herself from the highly politicized Supreme Court campaigns of recent years, painting herself as an independent judge who, while leaning more conservative than the Court’s current liberal majority, wants to just follow the law. 

However, since her election to the state’s District Two Court of Appeals, Lazar has been a reliably conservative vote on the reliably conservative appellate panel — including a case in which she sided with election deniers attempting to gain access to confidential voter information. Lazar’s campaign has also received endorsements and financial support from high profile Republicans. 

But she says she’s never been a member of a political party, contrasting herself with her opponent, Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, who was previously a Democratic member of the state Assembly. State Supreme Court races are nominally nonpartisan, but both political parties have been heavily involved in supporting their preferred candidates in recent years.  

“I am the one on my court that sort of solves the disputes, and I think that on the Supreme Court I would be the same way,” she said. “I know that it would be 3-4, and I know that I’d be in the minority with the more conservative leaning than liberal leaning, and I get that. But the decisions aren’t all 4-to-3. I mean, sometimes they’re 7-0 or 6-1, and I just think that I would bring a level of collegiality, a level of really hard dedication and work.” 

Since the liberal wing of the Court gained the majority with the election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz in 2023, the Court’s conservatives — most notably Justice Annette Ziegler and the outgoing Justice Rebecca Bradley — have frequently lobbed personal attacks at the majority in their published opinions, accusing the majority of being partisan lackeys for the Democratic party. 

Lazar said she doesn’t think the Court should work that way. 

“But some of the opinions written by our Court right now, the differences that are going on on that bench, there’s such a level of dissatisfaction with each other and personal animus that when you read those dissents, you say, how can you write something that personal and mean and then go and work the next day and sit across from that person and say, ‘Let’s talk about the next appeal?’” she said. 

Despite her efforts to paint herself as a moderate, Lazar has occasionally shared her agreement with conservative beliefs on abortion. As an attorney for the state Department of Justice under Gov. Scott Walker, Lazar defended Act 10, the law that repealed labor rights for public employees, and argued in favor of gerrymandered maps Republicans drew in 2011, locking in disproportionate GOP legislative majorities. 

“I would never be on that Court to be a firebrand,” Lazar said Tuesday. “I would be on that Court to stand up for what I believe in and what I believe the law says.” 

At the forum, Lazar said she can’t share with voters how she would decide hypothetical cases, but she can share “what I believe in and what I stand for.” The remark closely mirrors statements Protasiewicz made about her political beliefs during her 2023 campaign. Those remarks have followed Protasiewicz onto the bench, with Republicans often raising them to demand that she recuse herself from controversial cases. 

On her judicial philosophy, Lazar said she’s “an originalist with a slight tinge of textualism.” 

Originalism is a legal theory that emerged in the 1980s and has become the dominant ideology of conservative justices across the country. Under the theory, judges argue that laws should be interpreted through the intent and context of the law when it was written — attempting to glean the motivations of the country’s constitutional framers 250 years after the fact. Critics argue that originalists often use flawed historical analysis. 

But at the forum, Lazar gave a different meaning to originalism. 

“Originalist means that if you get the statute or the law or the constitutional amendment or whatever it is, you look at it first, and if you can’t answer the question, which you probably can’t, because why is it in front of your court if it’s so obvious? So you look at it, and then you look at headings. You look at statutes around it, you look at other statutes in the law. You start looking around. And that’s originalism. You’re looking at the words as they’re written,” she said. 

Lazar said that trying to determine the intent of legislators gets dangerous. 

“Now, some judicial philosophies go all the way out. And they look at everything, what people say when they write the laws, what their intent was, and that’s a little dangerous,” she said. “To me, that’s judicial activism, because I see judges and justices who get to the end result in their mind and then find a way to get there. That’s not the proper way to look at the law, and that’s not what we do. We don’t legislate on the bench. We’re not activists. We don’t have agendas.” 

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Organizers are working to introduce a Montana ballot initiative that could prevent corporations from spending on elections.

The constitutional amendment would alter corporate charters and the power given to “artificial persons” in Montana, barring them from political spending. It attempts to bypass the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which said under the First Amendment the government can’t bar corporations and similar groups from spending money independently to influence elections.

The Montana proposal is not yet on the 2026 ballot after the Montana attorney general and the Montana Supreme Court determined the version was legally insufficient under state constitutional rules, but organizers are refiling new versions in the hopes of getting the initiative on the ballot. 

In Wisconsin, home of the most expensive state Supreme Court races ever, could similar campaign finance laws be put in place? It’s a complicated question, according to legal experts. 

Unlike in Wisconsin, Montana residents can propose changes to the state constitution or statutory law through a citizen petition process. To qualify a constitutional initiative for the ballot, proponents must gather signatures equal to 10% of the state’s electors, including at least 10% of electors in two-fifths of Montana’s legislative districts. Statutory initiatives require signatures equal to 5% of the state’s electors, including at least 5% of electors in one-third of legislative districts.

Similar reforms in Wisconsin would need to come from the Legislature, not from a citizen-led ballot initiative. To place a constitutional amendment on the ballot, lawmakers must approve the same proposal in two consecutive legislative sessions. The amendment would then appear on the statewide ballot, where voters could approve it and make it part of the Wisconsin Constitution by a majority vote. The governor doesn’t have a role in that process.

If Montana’s initiative makes it to the ballot and voters approve it, more litigation is likely to follow, said Derek Clinger, senior counsel at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. It’s unclear if the organizer’s argument would survive a constitutional challenge. 

Nevertheless, Montana’s proposed ballot initiative is an interesting conversation starter that could help put “political pressure” on the courts if Montana voters agree to approve a potential amendment, Clinger said. 

“They made a case that doing this would comply with the U.S. Supreme Court precedent and that states have this power to regulate and kind of control what sorts of activities corporations are allowed to participate in,” Clinger said. “It’s an interesting idea what they’re doing in Montana, but I think it would absolutely be litigated, and it’s kind of hard to predict what would happen.”

There are other campaign finance changes Wisconsin politicians could introduce, such as spending limits in judicial elections.

“Judges are supposed to be kind of more above politics compared to legislators and executive officials, and that kind of need to keep judges out of the political fray can justify more campaign finance regulations,” Clinger said. “I think if there was an appetite to impose more regulations on judicial elections in Wisconsin, I think they would have the constitutional ability to do so. But the question is: Is there that appetite?”

Paul Nolette, director of Marquette University’s Les Aspin Center for Government, said it’s a difficult legal environment for supporters of campaign finance reform. 

“Getting laws on the books that make meaningful campaign finance change is just difficult at this particular moment,” Nolette said.

One way to change the system without limiting corporate giving would be more disclosure from so-called “dark money” groups, which can avoid disclosing donors through Super PAC donations. The Arizona Supreme Court allowed legislators to challenge a citizen ballot initiative that called for “dark money” disclosure. More than 70% of voters approved the measure in 2022. 

Legislators also could introduce a more robust public campaign finance system. Wisconsin once had a public financing program for Supreme Court elections as part of the Wisconsin Election Campaign Fund, but it was repealed in 2011. State Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, previously told Wisconsin Watch she was drafting a bill to revive the public financing system and would propose significantly larger grants than the original $100,000 for primary candidates and $300,000 for general election candidates, saying smaller amounts would not meaningfully support competitive campaigns.

“The amount of money in politics, even if it’s just coming from individuals, is still significant enough that it just overwhelms the amount of public money that could be available,” Nolette said.

Apart from the state Legislature, Clinger said the Wisconsin Supreme Court could institute recusal rules, which may discourage partisan campaign donations to justices.

Can Wisconsin do what Montana is attempting to prohibit corporations from donating to campaigns? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Liberal members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court said they were “shocked” at the ramifications of the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty’s arguments against a grant program meant to help prevent minority students from dropping out of technical college. 

The Court on Wednesday held oral arguments in a case that began in a 2021 lawsuit in Jefferson County Circuit Court. The suit alleges that the state’s Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant program, administered by the Higher Education Aids Board, unlawfully discriminates based on race. 

The program, established in the 1980s, provides small-dollar grants to Black, Native American and Hispanic students, as well as Southeast Asians who came to the U.S. from Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam after 1975. On average, members of these groups drop out of school or fail to graduate at substantially higher rates than their peers, the state has argued. 

The program has been a frequent target of Wisconsin Republicans in recent years — especially after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended the legality of affirmative action in college admissions. 

The Wisconsin Examiner previously reported that money through the program has largely been used to assist Black students at Milwaukee Area Technical College. 

In a decision last year, the 2nd District Court of Appeals sided with WILL and the taxpayers it is representing, declaring the program unconstitutional. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul appealed the decision and in November the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. 

WILL attorney Luke Berg argued Wednesday that any program that targets specific racial groups is unconstitutional — regardless of whether those groups face statistical disparities. 

“I think the worst form of discrimination is discrimination under the law, when the law treats individuals differently based on their race,” Berg said. “I’m not asking the Court to ignore that there are disparities in statistics, and I think we should all be concerned about that. But there are poor white students, there are poor Asian students, there are poor Afghani students, there are poor Palestinian students, there are poor Egyptian students.” 

“It cannot have explicit race discrimination under the law,” he continued later. “It can target racially neutral criteria like poverty, and it can solve those disparities indirectly. Give the scholarship to every student that needs it. If there are more poor Black students, more of them will get that scholarship.”

Several of the Court’s left-leaning justices pushed back on Berg’s comments, questioning how ignoring race-based statistical gaps achieves the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection. Justice Jill Karofsky told him, “your argument basically asks us to stick our heads in the sand.” 

Justice Rebecca Dallet noted that in Wisconsin, Black mothers and babies face much higher rates of health issues and under Berg’s legal construction, the state couldn’t do anything to specifically target that problem. 

“If the purpose is to help Black babies live who are not living at the same rate as white babies. How would they do that without mentioning the word Black?” Dallet said.

Berg responded that the state could pass a program that applies to “all babies” because “there are some white babies in the world who might need that program, too, and so you would make the program available to all.” 

“That is shocking, and if that’s what our U.S. Supreme Court wants to say, that is shocking, but I don’t think that that’s what they said in SFFA,” Dallet responded. 

Charlotte Gibson, the Department of Justice attorney arguing on behalf of the HEAB, called the appeals court’s decision “radical” saying that it went further than the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to end affirmative action. 

“The court of appeals decision was radical,” Gibson said. “I’m not aware of any court in the country that has come up with a ban this categorical that would impact things like medical research that’s targeted a particular racial group that’s suffering from specific health outcomes. But … that’s exactly what the rule of law they’re looking for would do.”

Berg opened his arguments to the Court saying he believed the justices should dismiss the case and accept the appeals court’s decision. He argued that if the Court sides with the state, an appeal will immediately be filed in federal court. 

“If this court reverses, either on standing or the merits, the next thing that will happen is someone will file this case in federal court, us or somebody else,” Berg said. “It may be a race to the courthouse, because this is, like I said, the lowest of low hanging fruit in terms of federal claims … So what will happen is the taxpayers will pay for this court’s time. The taxpayers will pay for their time to litigate the case again for three to four years. The taxpayers will pay the time [of] federal district court counsel.”

Justices Susan Crawford, Janet Protasiewicz and Dallet objected, saying they took his comments as a “threat.” 

“That is such an inappropriate argument. It is so inappropriate and disrespectful to the state and their program that they are here to argue in front of us, it’s basically a threat to us,” Dallet said.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Reading Time: 8 minutes

SUPREME COSTS: This is a follow-up to a series of articles about how Wisconsin chooses its judges. Read the rest of the series here.

Click here to read highlights from the story

• There have been two Appeals Court races since 2020 that cost more than $1 million, both in District 2, which covers counties in southeast Wisconsin outside of Milwaukee.

• This year was shaping up to be another costly race, but one of the candidates filed improper paperwork and was kicked off the ballot.

• The increased spending by outside groups and political parties is part of the same trend that has fueled record spending on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals may be the least visible layer of the state judiciary.

Almost all of its work is behind the scenes. It doesn’t conduct the dramatic trials that can grab headlines in circuit courts. Its rulings in high-stakes cases are usually appealed to the state Supreme Court — if those cases don’t bypass the appellate court altogether. 

But Wisconsin’s intermediate court does have one thing in common with the high court: increasingly expensive campaigns.

In recent years, spending on two Court of Appeals campaigns in the Waukesha-based District 2 exceeded the million-dollar mark — far short of the national record $144.5 million spent on the 2025 Supreme Court race, yet almost certainly unprecedented for Wisconsin appellate elections.

Now another seat is open in that same district, with the upcoming retirement of Presiding Judge Lisa Neubauer, the lone liberal among the district’s four jurists.

The race to replace Neubauer effectively ended Jan. 13, when the Wisconsin Elections Commission disqualified candidate Christine Hansen, an administrative law judge for the state Department of Corrections. Barring a write-in campaign, attorney Anthony LoCoco — known for his work with the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Institute for Reforming Government — will be unopposed in the officially nonpartisan April 7 election. 

Hansen’s husband notarized her declaration of candidacy, which is against state law. On the recommendation of its staff, the bipartisan commission voted 5-1 to block her from the ballot. 

Before Hansen was knocked out of the race, LoCoco was gearing up for a contest that could have reached the previous spending heights of 2021 and 2022. He raised $209,603 by Dec. 31, his campaign finance report shows.

That’s four times as much as fellow conservative Maria Lazar raised by this point in her successful 2022 bid for another seat in the same district — and even more than Lazar raised last year in her current campaign for Supreme Court.

Of the 10 candidates in five contested Court of Appeals elections in the last decade, only Neubauer posted a bigger total on a January report: $231,264 for a 2020 reelection race that followed her narrow loss for Supreme Court in 2019.

In comparison, Hansen raised $50,000, all from her own pocket.

Lazar is facing liberal District 4 Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor in the Supreme Court race to succeed conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, who is not seeking reelection. If Lazar wins, conservatives would retain their three-justice minority on the seven-member high court — but Democratic Gov. Tony Evers could name a liberal to replace Lazar in District 2, maintaining its current 3-1 conservative-liberal split.

That district has become Wisconsin’s top appellate court battleground. Statewide, 44 of 53 appellate races were uncontested from 2008 through 2025, along with all three this spring. But five of the nine contested races were in District 2, and total spending in four of those contests topped half a million dollars each, including the two million-dollar campaigns. Spending was under $300,000 in the other five races, including one in which the two candidates spent less than $25,000 total.

Like the Supreme Court, the rising cost of some appellate court campaigns appears to be part of a nationwide trend, and for some of the same reasons: growing involvement of political parties and special interests, driven by hot-button issues and national polarization and fueled by Wisconsin’s narrow ideological divide and lax campaign finance laws.

But it also reflects a dynamic in which each of the four Court of Appeals districts has evolved into liberal or conservative turf, triggering a challenge whenever a governor fills a vacancy with a judge from the other side.

Quiet but powerful

The Court of Appeals didn’t exist for Wisconsin’s first 130 years. Until 1978, all appeals from trial courts went directly to the state Supreme Court, unlike the three-level federal system. Eight sparsely populated states still don’t have appellate courts.

Now, after a 1977 state constitutional amendment created the Court of Appeals, 16 appeals judges are elected for six-year terms, on a staggered schedule. Five judges sit in Madison-based District 4 — which covers 24 central and western counties and originally heard virtually all challenges to state laws — with four each in District 1 (consisting of Milwaukee County only) and District 2 (covering the other 12 counties in southeastern and east-central Wisconsin) and just three in the 35-county northern District 3, based in Wausau.

Those judges work in three-member panels for about three-quarters of their cases. Single judges handle the least complex appeals, such as small claims, misdemeanors and violations of traffic laws or municipal ordinances.

Contributing to the court’s low profile, appellate judges hear oral arguments in only about 1% of cases. More often, the judges focus on attorneys’ written briefs and lower court trial transcripts.

But in its quiet way, the Court of Appeals holds the final word on nearly all everyday cases. In 2024, civil litigants and criminal defendants filed 2,529 appeals in the appellate courts. They appealed 561 of the appellate judges’ decisions to the Supreme Court. However, the high court agreed to hear just 17 appeals, typically only those posing significant constitutional questions. In another six cases, the justices allowed the parties to bypass the appellate court altogether. That means more than 99% of cases appealed from circuit courts ended at the Court of Appeals.

With so few cases going to the high court, the stakes are rising in appellate court elections, former Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske said.

A bench divided

Running in nonpartisan elections, many Court of Appeals candidates were traditionally not viewed as liberal or conservative. But that has changed in recent years, mirroring the highly public divisions on the Supreme Court.

Of the 16 current Court of Appeals judges, eight were appointed to the appellate or circuit bench by Democratic governors, ran for the Supreme Court as liberals or ran for or won partisan office as Democrats. Another six were either former GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s appointees, ran for the appeals court as conservatives or held partisan office as Republicans.

Retiring Chief Judge Maxine White and Deputy Chief Judge Joe Donald were appointed to Milwaukee County Circuit Court by former GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson and to the District 2 bench by Evers, while District 4 Judge Jennifer Nashold held appointed offices under both Walker and former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. However, all are considered liberals. That means  all judges in Districts 1 and 4 are liberals, while conservatives hold all District 3 seats. Only District 2 is ideologically split.

That distribution reflects the political composition of the districts, former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly said. All District 2 counties voted for Republicans in the 2024 presidential and 2022 gubernatorial elections, but liberals carried Kenosha and Winnebago counties in the last two Supreme Court races, plus Racine County in 2025.

While the divide among District 2 judges isn’t new, it didn’t initially draw political attention. After Doyle appointed Neubauer to fill a vacancy in 2008, ideology didn’t play a major role in her campaign for a full term later that year. She won that $641,259 contest against attorney William Gleisner, then was unopposed for reelection in 2014. 

It was only after Neubauer ran a liberal Supreme Court campaign against conservative District 2 colleague Brian Hagedorn in 2019 that she became a target of the right. She fended off a 2020 challenge from conservative Waukesha County Judge Paul Bugenhagen Jr. in a $589,037 campaign.

Challenges to another Democratic governor’s appointees soon followed. In 2021, Shelley Grogan, a Bradley aide and Muskego municipal judge, attacked her opponent, then-incumbent Jeff Davis, as a liberal appointed by Evers in 2019 — even though Davis had strong Republican ties and was endorsed by conservative Justice Annette Ziegler and former conservative justices Patience Roggensack and David Prosser. 

Grogan — who was backed by Walker, Bradley, Kelly and Republican billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein and Diane Hendricks — defeated Davis in a $1.56 million campaign. Although the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign doesn’t track appellate court campaign spending the way it does Supreme Court races, the 2021 District 2 contest was likely the state’s most expensive. 

In 2022, Lazar took down then-incumbent Lori Kornblum, who had been appointed by Evers earlier that year, in a $1.05 million contest.  

Conversely, former Democratic Assembly candidate Sara Geenen scored a 2023 victory in a $299,717 District 1 campaign to unseat then-incumbent William Brash, a 2015 Walker appointee who had been unopposed for a full term in 2017. Geenen won by 37 percentage points, the widest margin of victory in the last nine contested races.

Originally positioning himself to challenge Neubauer, LoCoco’s campaign website leaves no doubt where he stands. On his homepage, he labels himself “a proven conservative fighter who will keep our communities safe and the bureaucracy out of our lives.” Elsewhere, he rails against “activist judges who have … given in to woke ideology,” and he blames “progressive politics” for “putting our kids and families in danger.”

LoCoco is endorsed by an array of Republican politicians — including Walker and Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, now running for attorney general — and conservative jurists, including Bradley, Ziegler, Kelly, Lazar, Grogan and District 2 Judge Mark Gundrum. LoCoco’s top donors include former GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde and the Uihleins.

LoCoco’s approach differs from that of most judicial candidates, who traditionally have tried to play down their ideological leanings, regardless of who has endorsed or donated to them, particularly in the lower courts. Only in recent years have Supreme Court candidates publicly stated their views on controversial issues like abortion, public employee collective bargaining rights and legislative redistricting. Campaign websites for Lazar and Taylor portray them as independent and impartial.

Following the money

However, state and local arms of the two major parties have been increasingly involved in recent Court of Appeals races, although their spending started years later and at a much lower level than in Supreme Court races. 

District 2 accounted for all three of the races with Republican cash: $34,054 to Grogan, $19,140 to Bugenhagen and $10,856 to Lazar. It was also home to three of the five contests with Democratic money: $189,272 to Davis, $66,777 to Kornblum and $14,146 to Neubauer. Democrats gave another $14,126 combined to Geenen and losing 2021 District 3 candidate Rick Cveykus.

All told, the parties have spent $348,372 on appellate races since 2020, with Democrats outspending Republicans more than 4 to 1. The combined $223,326 of party spending in the 2021 Grogan-Davis race was the most for any Court of Appeals campaign.   

District 2 was also the focus of another relatively new development in appellate elections: independent spending by special interests that advertise separately from candidates’ campaigns, though at much lower levels than in Supreme Court races. Lazar was backed by $250,000 in outside spending by Fair Courts America — funded by Richard Uihlein to back conservative judicial candidates — and Grogan benefited from $56,173 spent by the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national organization. 

The Uihlein group spent more than Lazar’s own campaign, the only time that has happened in a Court of Appeals race. Together, the $306,173 in independent expenditures by conservative groups was more than 27 times the combined total of $11,134 that liberal groups spent in support of Davis, Neubauer and former Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, who won a District 4 seat in 2010.    

Nationally, million-dollar campaigns for intermediate appellate courts remain uncommon,  according to Douglas Keith, deputy director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The Brennan Center compiles campaign spending figures for state Supreme Court races but not lower court contests.

However, Wisconsin’s top two Court of Appeals campaigns weren’t the country’s most expensive. In 2004, a Georgia candidate reportedly spent more than $3 million of his own money on a losing bid for an appellate judgeship. And 2023 spending by four candidates seeking two Pennsylvania appellate court seats totaled more than $2.6 million.

As with Supreme Court campaigns, wealthy individuals can donate heavily to influence lower court contests, Keith noted. Before billionaire Elon Musk spent $55.9 million on Wisconsin’s 2025 high court election, he gave a total of $3 million to two political action committees active in multiple 2024 Texas judicial races.  

For now, most appellate court campaigns are “still very much under the radar,” Keith said. But that could change “as we’re seeing greater recognition of just how important these courts are,” he added.

A Wisconsin Appeals Court election was shaping up to break records until a candidate got kicked off the ballot is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A cascade effect appears to be pushing more students of color to Wisconsin’s four-year public universities.

The post How end of affirmative action is affecting Black and Hispanic enrollment at Wisconsin colleges appeared first on WPR.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

In 2022, a student-led voting advocacy organization sued in Dane County to clarify which parts of a witness’ address must appear on an absentee ballot envelope. What was accepted differed from city to city. 

The 4th District Court of Appeals, in an opinion written by Judge Chris Taylor, affirmed a lower court ruling that a witness only needs to provide an address where that person can “be communicated with.” The Legislature, which had appealed, argued a precise, multipart address is necessary to prevent election fraud. 

“The legislature could have required such specificity for the absentee ballot witness address requirement when it initially adopted the witness address requirement in 1966 or in subsequent modifications of the absentee voting statutes,” wrote Taylor, a liberal candidate running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April.

Taylor’s campaign shared that decision as a prime example of the kind of justice she would be on the high court. The campaign for her opponent, conservative appeals court Judge Maria Lazar, shared that exact same decision as a prime example of why Taylor shouldn’t be on the high court.

As Wisconsinites head to the polls in just two months to elect another state Supreme Court justice, Wisconsin Watch asked the Lazar and Taylor campaigns separately to provide examples of rulings in past cases that show how they might serve as a justice and decisions from their opponents that warrant criticism. 

That both campaigns shared the otherwise mundane witness address case speaks to the deep ideological divide that persists in the state judiciary. Campaigns can point to the outcomes of politically charged cases, such as those related to voting rights, gun rights or abortion, as a way to point voters to what their views are, legal experts said.

“To me, those are very subtle signals as to their constituency that the impact of this decision, one way or another, is consistent with your views,” said Janine Geske, who served on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1993 to 1998. 

A spokesperson for Taylor’s campaign said the case demonstrates how Taylor protected Democratic rights and “fairly” and “impartially” applies the law. 

“This decision balanced protecting each Wisconsinite’s right to vote with establishing a fair, uniform procedure for our local clerks,” Taylor campaign spokesman Sam Roecker said. “As indicative of the strength of this decision, no party involved in the case appealed Judge Taylor’s decision.” 

Lazar’s campaign said Taylor failed to consider the intent of the Legislature. 

“Judge Taylor’s opinion, on the merits, indicates how far an activist judge who legislates from the bench will go to alter procedures for election integrity,” Lazar campaign spokesman Nathan Conrad said of the witness address case. “Every common sense citizen in Wisconsin knows that an address consists of a street name, number and municipality.” 

Other significant cases from the judges

The other judicial rulings the candidates’ campaigns shared with Wisconsin Watch also showcase the candidates’ contrasting judicial philosophies.

Lazar’s campaign pointed to her opinions that show her being tough on crime and supportive of Second Amendment rights. One was a Waukesha County case where she ruled that a man who pleaded guilty to child enticement and mental harm could not withdraw his guilty plea. In the other case she ruled that the city of Delafield could not deny an operating permit for a shooting range. 

In addition to the voting rights case, Taylor’s campaign highlighted rulings that favored utility consumers and reproductive health. In one decision the court determined the Public Service Commission did not follow proper rulemaking procedures when it prohibited activities companies use to incentivize lower energy use. In the other opinion Taylor wrote that a woman could continue seeking legal action against a physician she claimed did not inform her of a recommendation to another doctor to remove her ovaries during a colon surgery. The Wisconsin Supreme Court last May affirmed that decision with Justice Brian Hagedorn joining the liberal justices in the majority.

The different political focuses between the candidates is no surprise given their different professional and political paths prior to their time on the bench. Lazar, a conservative, was an assistant attorney general under Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen before her election to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015. Taylor worked as a policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and served five terms as a Democrat in the Assembly before Gov. Tony Evers appointed her to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020.

The judicial rulings they highlighted as reflecting poorly on their opponent are nothing like those featured in the multimillion-dollar Supreme Court campaigns of recent years, when both sides sought to paint the other as lax on crime and public safety. 

While there are still two months to go, it’s possible the race will stay muted because the stakes are different with no Supreme Court majority on the line, said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Neither outcome will change liberal control of the court, though because the winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, it could extend guaranteed liberal control until at least 2030.

The quiet nature of the race is “bizarre” given the increasingly political direction Wisconsin Supreme Court elections have gone in the past, Schweber said.

“There is not invective. There is not screaming accusations,” Schweber said. “This may all change over the course of the election, but at least at the moment, we’re not seeing over-the-top ads making hysterical accusations, and it appears that at least part of the reason for that might be that neither campaign can find anything particularly embarrassing that the opposing candidate has done.” 

Some criticisms from each campaign are still there and could grow stronger as Election Day nears. In a recent social media post seeking campaign contributions, Lazar’s campaign described Taylor not as a judge, but a “radical left-wing legislator.” Taylor’s campaign in a post following the release of January campaign finance reports described Lazar as “our extreme opponent.” 

Lazar and Taylor will face each other in a March 25 debate hosted by WISN-TV at the Lubar Center at Marquette University’s Law School. 

Which cases did the campaigns share?

Taylor’s campaign shared the following cases with Wisconsin Watch as examples of how Taylor would serve as a justice: 

• Midwest Renewable Energy Association v. Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (the utility case). (Read the opinion here.) 
• Rise Inc. v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (the absentee ballot case). (Read the opinion here.)
• Melissa A. Hubbard v. Carol J. Neuman, M.D. (the ovary removal case). (Read the opinion here.)

The campaign criticized a 2024 appellate opinion written by Lazar that contradicted a ruling from another appeals court branch on whether a conservative group questioning the 2020 election results could access health information about individuals who were judged incapable of voting. Lazar and another judge on the 2nd District Court of Appeals released an opinion that said the group had a right to the information after the 4th District’s opposite ruling was published as precedent.

The opinion shows Lazar “is an extremist who uses our courts to protect special interests and push her right-wing agenda,” Roecker said. 

“Lazar completely ignored recent precedent that private voter data could not be released to the public,” Roecker said. “That should alarm anyone who believes in protecting our democracy and fair elections.” 

Lazar’s campaign in response to that criticism said the dual appeals court opinions were about “issues of procedure” when two districts disagree. The 2nd District revised the opinion at the request of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which then accepted the case, Conrad said. It is scheduled for oral arguments before the high court in April. 

Lazar’s campaign shared the following cases as examples of how Lazar would serve as a justice: 

• Saybrook Tax Exemptors, LLC. v. Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, et. al.: Lazar concluded that certain agreements and documents between a financial company and the Lake Superior Chippewa tribe about plans for a casino were void. (Read the decision here.)
• State v. Scherer: Lazar ruled that law enforcement’s seizure of a man’s cellphone that possessed child pornography was too broad and violated his privacy rights, despite the “egregious” potential crime. (Read the decision here.)
• State v. Flores (the child enticement case). (Read the decision here.)
• State v. Heinz: Lazar denied a request to modify the sentence of a woman who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after she was charged with first-degree reckless homicide. (Read the decision here.)
• Hartland Sportsman Club v. City of Delafield (the gun range case). (Read the decision here.)
• Pewaukee Land County, LLC. v. Soo Line Railroad: Lazar ruled that a company could not claim ownership of property in Pewaukee that belonged to the Canadian Pacific railroad, but did not block the company’s current use of the property. (Read the decision here.)
• Craig, et. al. v. Village of West Bend: Lazar dismissed a case about the transfer of cemetery property that already had been decided in an earlier case. (Read the decision here.) 

Lazar’s campaign shared two cases as criticism of Taylor’s judicial opinions:

• Rise Inc. v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (the absentee ballot case). (Read the opinion here.)
• State v. Kruckenberg Anderson: In an opinion written by Taylor, the 4th District Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that suppressed certain statements a teenager made to law enforcement prior to being charged with killing his newborn child. The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied a petition to review the case in 2024. (Read the Court of Appeals opinion here.)

Judicial philosophies clash as both Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates point to same case to highlight their fitness for the high court is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.