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In under two weeks, voters will head to the polls to select a new Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. The winner will likely play a role in how voters cast ballots for the subsequent decade.

That’s because the Wisconsin Supreme Court plays a key role in settling voting disputes, particularly when state government is divided between a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled Legislature.

In the past few years, the court has issued a series of high-stakes rulings on election administration — banning and then unbanning ballot drop boxes, ordering new legislative maps, limiting who can bring voting-related lawsuits, and allowing the state’s top election official to remain in her role.

While the Wisconsin Supreme Court race is officially nonpartisan, candidates have become increasingly willing to embrace partisan views and often campaign on their records as liberals or conservatives. In this race, Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor are squaring off. Taylor is a former Democratic member in the state Assembly, while Lazar is a member of the conservative Federalist Society. 

Although there are exceptions, justices’ votes on election cases often align with their ideological backgrounds.

Unlike the past two Wisconsin Supreme Court races, though, this contest won’t determine ideological control of the court. Liberals already hold a 4-3 majority, and the outcome will either preserve the liberal majority or expand it to 5-2 by replacing retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. As a result, the race has drawn significantly less attention and spending than the last two contests, which decided the court’s ideological balance.

Even so, the winning candidate in that person’s upcoming 10-year term is likely to weigh in on a range of voting battles currently playing out in lower courts. Those may include cases over whether voters with disabilities can cast electronic ballots, the legality of Wisconsin’s membership in the multistate Electronic Registration Information Center, a demand for the Wisconsin Elections Commission to audit the citizenship of registered voters, and whether voters can spoil a ballot that they’ve already returned and cast a new one.

Critically, the winning justice will also be a member of the court for the 2028 presidential election, when voting disputes often intensify and escalate to court challenges. 

“There’s a lot of importance just because of the length of the term,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, who noted that the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the past 10 years has weighed in on absentee voting rules, the legality of postponing elections because of the pandemic and President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

Because Wisconsin is a consistent battleground state, Burden said, the court becomes a frequent venue for efforts to change election rules for national races. Some of those potential lawsuits may be hard to predict, he added, because developments in technology and AI in campaigns over the next decade may require new rules or changes to current laws.

Although liberals have a firm hold on the court now, Burden said, they shouldn’t take that for granted. Ten years ago, conservatives had a clear court majority, so much so that liberals didn’t even field a candidate in the 2017 race. Now, liberals have a hold on the court and could extend it with a win. 

With Wisconsin politics frequently switching from one side of the aisle to the other, he said, this election may be pivotal for the balance of power down the road.

Candidates’ pasts reveal stark contrast on elections

The candidates’ records — from their rulings, prior public-facing jobs and campaign positions — reveal sharp divides in how they each approach election law.

For example, as an assistant attorney general for the state under GOP Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, Lazar defended Wisconsin’s voter ID law and Republican-drawn legislative maps, which critics have described as among the most gerrymandered in the country.

Taylor took the opposite stances on both issues. During her time in the Legislature, she called for repealing the voter ID law, which has since been enshrined in the Wisconsin Constitution. She also derided the Republican redistricting effort as a means to do “whatever it takes to amass and protect their power.”

More recently, Lazar was involved in an unusual case in which two state appeals courts issued conflicting opinions on the same election issue: In November 2023, one court found that a conservative group wasn’t entitled to obtain information related to people deemed by judges to be incapable of voting. The next month, Lazar joined the majority in a second court that reached the opposite conclusion — despite a Wisconsin Supreme Court precedent stating that only the high court can overturn appellate decisions.

That case is now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Both candidates have also played pivotal roles in more recent election rulings.

In one case involving absentee ballots, Taylor wrote the majority opinion rejecting the Legislature’s argument that an absentee voter’s address must include a street number, name and municipality. Instead, she adopted a more lenient standard for an address, requiring voters to provide enough information for a clerk to reasonably identify where a voter lives.

In a separate case, Lazar joined a panel rejecting a lower court opinion that voters with disabilities should be allowed to have electronic ballots sent to them electronically. 

Cases on the Wisconsin Supreme Court horizon

Only a small fraction of cases heard in circuit and appeals courts ultimately come before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The high court issued just 23 opinions in its 2024-25 term, and it’s hard to predict which cases will be taken up. At present, only one election law case is currently before the court.

That number may remain low following a 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling restricting who can file lawsuits over election rules and policies. Writing for the majority, liberal Justice Jill Karofsky said people must be personally “aggrieved” to bring election lawsuits. 

In dissent, outgoing conservative justice Bradley wrote that the majority’s ruling “guts the People’s right of access to the courts in election law matters.”

Among the issues likely to reach the court in coming years are challenges to the state’s congressional boundaries, which liberals are trying to redraw ahead of the typical 10-year cycle. One such case is currently slated for a jury trial before a three-judge panel in April 2027.

The court could also be asked to decide whether election officials can be sued for failing to count votes, a central issue in the ongoing lawsuit over whether Madison should be forced to pay out millions for disenfranchising nearly 200 voters whose ballots were misplaced in the 2024 presidential election .

Ultimately, the most consequential case the next justice could face may come in 2028, the next presidential election year. In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court narrowly halted Trump’s attempt to throw out enough Democratic votes to change the outcome of the race. The 2024 election wasn’t extensively litigated in Wisconsin courts, but the potential for court challenges remains in future presidential contests.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat’s free national newsletter here.

Wisconsin Supreme Court race pivotal for future election policy 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.

In a unanimous decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that police officers must read K-12 students their Miranda rights before interrogating them in a school setting. 

The case stems from an incident at a Two Rivers middle school in which a 12-year-old seventh grade student, referred to in the case under the pseudonym Kevin, touched the groin of a classmate. Kevin was pulled out of class to be interviewed in a small room dedicated for use by school resource officers. After an initial interview around 10 minutes, Kevin was allowed to leave before being interviewed again about an hour later by the officers and a vice principal. The boy was not able to call his parents and was not informed he was allowed to leave the room. 

While he was in the room, a uniformed officer stood in front of the door and the school resource officer doing the interview lied by saying there were witnesses to the incident. Police officers are allowed to lie during interviews to elicit a confession. 

Kevin said during both interviews that he had touched the boy’s groin but that it was an accident. 

Kevin was later charged with fourth-degree sexual assault and in a bench trial was found delinquent by a Manitowoc County Circuit Court judge. 

The boy appealed the ruling, arguing that the statements he made during the interview were inadmissible because he had not been read his Miranda rights. 

In the majority decision, authored by Justice Janet Protasiewicz and joined by the Court’s three other liberal-leaning justices, the Court found that taking Kevin to the room for questioning amounted to being in police custody and he should have been read his rights. 

The ruling found that the interview statements weren’t admissible. However it also found that the evidence for the delinquency finding did not rely on the statements so the circuit judge’s decision was upheld. 

“While Kevin sat across from one officer who questioned him, another fully uniformed and armed officer stood positioned in front of the door. The questioning officer asked him about an alleged sexual assault. She told him — untruthfully — that there were witnesses,” Protasiewicz wrote. “She also accusingly told him ‘it happened.’ No one told him he could reach out to his parents or any other adult. No one told him he was free to leave. No one told him he did not need to answer questions.” 

“But in the end, a 12-year-old boy was questioned in a closet-like law-enforcement office with two police officers, one who was fully uniformed and standing in front of the door,” she continued. 

Ryan Cox, the legal director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, which filed an amicus brief in the case, said the ruling would protect the constitutional rights of children.

“The Supreme Court’s decision is a major victory for the due process rights of Wisconsin students,” Cox said in a statement to the Wisconsin Examiner. “The ruling means that, in deciding whether a student must be read their Miranda rights during a police interrogation in a school setting, Wisconsin courts must consider the reasons why a child in the student’s position would feel coerced and not free to leave. This decision upholds students’ Fifth Amendment right to protect themselves against self-incrimination during encounters with law enforcement. Students retain their constitutional rights, including the right to remain silent and seek counsel when interacting with law enforcement, even in the school environment. Police are not exempt from their responsibilities to uphold the rights of a person simply because the student is a minor in a school environment. The Court affirmed this fundamental principle and protected Wisconsin students across the state from coercive and unconstitutional police conduct.”

In a concurring opinion joined by the other two conservative leaning justices, Justice Brian Hagedorn said the issue was made larger than it should have been, writing that the majority transformed “a rather ordinary schoolhouse questioning” into a matter of constitutional import. 

Hagedorn wrote that a seventh grader would likely see being questioned by police as intimidating but recognize that school resource officers are trusted parts of the school community. 

“Would a reasonable 12-year-old in this situation feel some pressure? Absolutely. But was this the kind of hostile, inherently coercive questioning that animated the court in Miranda? It was not,” Hagedorn wrote. “A reasonable person in Kevin’s position would not see SROs as unfamiliar and antagonistic adults. The reasonable person would see them as dedicated and familiar faces — intimidating to be sure — but nonetheless present to keep everyone safe.” 

Communities across Wisconsin have had fights over the presence of school resource officers for years. Officers were removed from Milwaukee Public Schools in 2016 at the request of community members, but returned last year by state legislators under a provision of a law providing local governments with increased state financial support. Opponents of SROs have argued the presence of cops in schools makes Black students in particular targets of inappropriate monitoring at school, which is supposed to be a safe place for them to learn. 

In his opinion, Hagedorn wrote that the ruling was a close call but that he wanted to distinguish between a true police interrogation and the normal functions of school discipline. 

“These facts give some support to the idea that a reasonable person in Kevin’s situation would have felt pressured to confess,” Hagedorn wrote. “Under my read of the cases, however, more is required to approximate the coercive environment at issue in Miranda. Someone in Kevin’s shoes would certainly feel the weight of adult condemnation. His conscience might even call him to come clean in the face of a serious infraction. But this normal human experience should not so quickly be placed on par with the uniquely coercive station house questioning to which Miranda applies.”

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court debate scheduled for Wednesday night has been postponed after Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor's campaign said she is ill.

The post Wisconsin Supreme Court debate postponed appeared first on WPR.

The candidate debate scheduled for Wednesday night between Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Chris Taylor and Maria Lazar was canceled after Taylor was hospitalized with kidney stones Wednesday morning. 

According to a release from Taylor’s campaign, she woke up “feeling unwell” and went to urgent care where doctors recommended she visit the hospital for further evaluation. In a later release, the campaign said she’d rest a few days before returning to the campaign trail. 

“This afternoon Judge Taylor was diagnosed with kidney stones and will rest and recover for the next couple days before returning to the campaign trail,” the campaign said. “Judge Taylor will soon launch a statewide tour to meet voters across Wisconsin and we are committed to rescheduling today’s debate next week on a date that works for WISN, debate partners, and our opponent’s campaign. We appreciate everyone who has reached out to wish Judge Taylor well and we’re looking forward to a quick recovery.”

Wednesday’s debate, scheduled to be held at 7 p.m. at the Marquette University School of Law, was the only planned debate between the two candidates. A rescheduled debate is set to be held April 2 at 7 p.m. The makeup will be held at WISN’s studio without any audience. 

The race between Taylor and Lazar, both judges on state appeals courts, has drawn less attention than other recent Supreme Court races, with the ideological balance of the Court not at stake. A Marquette Law School poll released on Tuesday found that Taylor holds an 8 percentage point edge among likely voters, yet nearly half of those polled had still not decided whom to support.

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This story has been updated.

Racine County election conspiracy theorist Harry Wait was found guilty of election fraud Tuesday for requesting absentee ballots on behalf of two elected officials in 2022. 

Wait has been a prominent voice in Wisconsin’s community of election deniers since the 2020 presidential election, including as a leader of the group H.O.T. Government. He was convicted of two counts of misdemeanor election fraud and one count of identity theft by a Walworth County jury. 

Wait was charged by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul in 2022 after he requested absentee ballots using the names of Racine Mayor Cory Mason, a Democrat, and Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican. Wait said at the time he requested the ballots as part of an effort to prove the state’s absentee ballot system is vulnerable to fraud. 

After requesting the ballots, Wait publicized his effort, gaining the attention of Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling. Schmaling and other members of the Wisconsin Republican party celebrated Wait’s work as highlighting a vulnerability in the system. However election administrators said Wait had committed a crime by requesting the ballots and the fact he was caught showed the system was not actually vulnerable. 

Voting by mail has been under attack from Republicans in Wisconsin and across the country since President Donald Trump began to make his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen partially because of absentee ballots. Trump lost the 2020 election in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes and numerous audits, reviews and investigations have affirmed that result. 

Wait faces up to seven years imprisonment, but his sentencing has not yet been scheduled. After his conviction, he told reporters he “would do it again.”

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Liberals currently hold a 4-3 majority on the court. If Lazar wins, that margin will remain the same. If Taylor wins, it will grow to 5-2.

The post Poll: Chris Taylor leads Maria Lazar in Wisconsin Supreme Court race appeared first on WPR.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court justices seemed split Tuesday on whether the Trump administration should be allowed to turn away asylum-seekers who present themselves at ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The question presented to the justices was whether migrants have to fully cross into the United States in order to have the right to apply for asylum and be processed, or if they can apply for asylum when they appear at a port of entry while on Mexico’s side of the border. 

The policy requiring a full crossing, known as metering, is defunct, but the Trump administration is asking the high court to make a determination in order to potentially revive the practice for future use at the southern border.

“This is an important tool in the government’s toolbox for dealing with border surges when they occur,” Vivek Suri, assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, told the court during oral arguments on the asylum case. “I can’t predict when the next border surge occurs, but I can say that when it does occur, this is a tool that (the Department of Homeland Security) would want in its toolbox. It’s not something the court should leave to future uncertainty.”

The six conservative justices seemed to agree with the Trump administration’s position, and questioned the definition of when a migrant “arrives” in the United States and can therefore seek asylum — legal protection granted to those fleeing danger or persecution in their home country.

The three liberals of the Supreme Court — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson —  asked whether the policy violated federal law protecting refugees. 

Lower and appeals courts have repeatedly blocked the metering policy, finding it violated U.S. asylum and refugee law for those escaping persecution after the first Trump administration expanded its use in 2017. The Biden administration rescinded the policy in 2021. 

A 2020 investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that up to 680 migrants per day were turned around as a result of the metering policy. 

The ‘magic thing’

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Kelsi Corkran, an attorney who argued on behalf of the immigrant legal aid and humanitarian group Al Otro Lado, how close an asylum seeker has to be to qualify as “arriving” in the U.S.

The immigration advocacy group originally brought the challenge in 2017 after asylum seekers were turned away by border officials at U.S. ports of entry. 

“What is the magic thing, or the dispositive thing, that we’re looking for, where we say, ‘Ah, now that person we can say arrives in the United States?’” Barrett asked. 

Corkran said someone arrives in the U.S. at a port of entry “when they are at the threshold of the port’s entrance, about to step over.” 

“I think that’s consistent with ordinary meaning,” she said. “I arrive at my house, or I arrive in my yard, when I’m going through the gate. Now that process of arriving is interrupted by the border officer physically blocking them from completing the arrival.”

Barrett also asked Suri if the Trump administration plans to reinstate the metering policy. 

Suri said the Trump administration would like to, “when border conditions justify.”

Jackson noted the policy, in practice, would require an asylum seeker to violate U.S. immigration law by entering into the country without authorization, based on the Trump administration’s argument that a migrant has to be on U.S. soil before making an asylum claim. 

That would be considered entering the U.S. unlawfully.

“So imagine a polite asylum seeker who wants to do everything by the book, he approaches the border but does not cross precisely because the law says you are not supposed to enter the United States without authority,” Jackson said. “If we’re trying to think about what ‘arriving in’ means, surely Congress was contemplating that a person would be coming to the United States, would be doing so with an intent to comply with the law that says you’re not supposed to enter, and thereby asking for entry.” 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh also questioned Suri about how the policy seems to give preference to migrants to enter the U.S. without authorization, rather than those who are seeking to make an asylum claim. 

Suri said the metering policy doesn’t prevent a migrant from seeking asylum. 

“It’s saying ‘our port (of entry) is at capacity today, try again some other day,’ and that time when that person comes in, that person could come in legally,” he said. 

Refugee laws

Sotomayor questioned Suri how the metering policy didn’t violate the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951. That act, which the U.S. signed in 1967, was created after the M.S. St. Louis ship, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees during World War II, was prevented entry to the U.S. and turned back to Europe. 

Some passengers were able to find refuge in other countries, but 254 died in the Holocaust.

Suri said the metering policy doesn’t send people back to their home country. 

“No, you’re just telling them to walk back,” Sotomayor said, adding that if the turn-back policy were applied to the Jewish refugees on the St. Louis, it would be the same as telling them to swim back. 

“They happened to be on a boat, but that’s what we did,” she said. “We didn’t let them dock. We didn’t consider whether they were being persecuted. And the majority of those people were shipped back or had to go back from where they came and were killed. That’s what we’re doing here, isn’t it?”

Suri said that he does “not deny the moral weight of claims made by refugees, but that is not the question before the court.”

He said the issue is whether Congress imposed the obligation “in the asylum and inspection statutes, and those refer only to aliens who arrive in the United States.”

Sotomayor pushed back and noted that if someone were to fly into LaGuardia Airport in New York, they “may not have put their foot on U.S. land, but they’ve arrived in the United States. They’re knocking on the door.” 

The justices are likely to make a decision on the case by late June. 

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• Both Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates talk about judicial independence, but their views line up on opposite sides of the conservative/liberal divide.

• Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar emphasizes the need to prevent liberals from controlling five seats on the court.

• Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor calls for a pro-democracy court opposed to gerrymandering and overturning election results.

• Early voting starts Tuesday, March 24. Election Day is Tuesday, April 7.

Editor’s note (March 25, 2026): The debate between Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor was rescheduled for Thursday, April 2, at 7 p.m. The original debate was scheduled for March 25, but was canceled when Taylor announced she was diagnosed with kidney stones. The April 2 debate will still be hosted by WISN 12 and will be held at the station’s studios in Milwaukee.

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Inside a dimly lit banquet hall at an Irish pub in Germantown and at a century-old supper club along Wautoma’s Silver Lake, both 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates championed a fair and impartial judiciary.  

“We need to put someone on this bench who is not going to cater to the public whims, who is not going to put their hand up in the air and say, ‘What trend in society is important today?’” one candidate told the Germantown crowd. 

“We must have the judiciary be fiercely independent,” the other candidate said in Wautoma. “We cannot be rubber stamps for any party, any branch of government and certainly not the federal government.”

A voter might have trouble deciphering which candidate made which statement, but in the April 7 election to fill an open seat on the state’s high court, the choice couldn’t be more stark.

While both Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar (the candidate in Germantown) and Chris Taylor (the candidate in Wautoma) advocate for impartiality, their judicial philosophies and public support represent opposing political views on issues such as reproductive health care, criminal justice policy and the balance of power between government and business. Taylor is a former Democratic lawmaker. Lazar is a member of and has spoken three times before the conservative Federalist Society. Taylor is endorsed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Lazar is endorsed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state’s six Republican members of Congress. 

The election marks a quiet departure from the two most recent high court elections when it comes to national attention, spending and vicious political attack ads. As of mid-March, outside spending by political groups on the 2026 election reached just over $638,000, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks money in state elections — far below the nearly $25 million at this time last year.

“It’s a positive in that it’s a much more low-key, low-energy, civil election,” said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You can argue that it has gone too far. There has to be something in between the endless barrages of television advertisements and elections that happen without anybody knowing about them, and as a state we do seem to, with respect to judicial elections, have trouble finding that happy middle ground.” 

With fewer fireworks in 2026, the race has instead highlighted the stark contrast between Lazar and Taylor’s political backgrounds and how their campaigns have used those differences to attack each other. 

Lazar, a conservative member of the Waukesha-based 2nd District Court of Appeals, started her legal career in private practice before joining the Department of Justice as an assistant attorney general under Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen. During  that time, she defended Gov. Scott Walker-era laws, such as voter ID and Act 10. She was elected to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015 and 2021 and then to the Court of Appeals in 2022 when she unseated an Evers-appointed judge. That race also broke along party lines, with Republicans supporting Lazar. 

Taylor, a liberal member of the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals, also began in private practice. Taylor worked as a policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin for eight years until winning an Assembly special election in 2011 as a Democrat. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Taylor to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020, and she ran unopposed in the 2023 election for the Court of Appeals. 

Taylor’s campaign and liberal-leaning groups have seized on Lazar’s resume, often describing her as an extremist. Lazar’s campaign has swiped at Taylor’s legislative experience, casting her as a radical politician. 

In interviews with Wisconsin Watch, both candidates dismissed the partisan labels. 

“I’m not a Republican,” Lazar said. “No, I didn’t work for Scott Walker. I represented Scott Walker. I represented legislators. I represented the Government Accountability Board. I represented Tony Evers and Doug La Follette. So anyone who thinks that I’m extreme because I actually tried to do a good job and represent my state is the extreme party.”

Taylor, who told Isthmus earlier this year that she is a Democrat, said she does not approach her judicial work from a liberal viewpoint. 

“I don’t ever think of myself as the liberal,” Taylor said. “I hear it all the time. I know everyone says that, but I don’t approach being a judge that way at all.” 

The stakes in 2026 are different

The election’s subdued tone stems largely from the fact that no court majority is on the line. 

Lazar and Taylor are running for the seat being vacated by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, meaning a Lazar win on April 7 would not shift the court’s ideological balance. The liberal majority could grow to five out of seven seats with a Taylor victory, guaranteeing liberal control of the court through at least 2030. 

“That would make the road back to a conservative majority very difficult, indeed,” Schweber said. 

In addition, conservative Justice Annette Ziegler earlier this month announced she would not seek reelection in 2027. That could open the door further for liberal candidates, who in 2023 and 2025 won by more than 10 percentage points.  

When Lazar discusses what’s on the line in this race, she tells supporters that the liberal majority on the court cannot “ever” grow to five justices. Three justices must agree to hear an appeal. The court needs balance — and to reflect the people of Wisconsin, Lazar explained to supporters in Germantown. 

“We need to make sure that we have someone up there who can vote to take appeals,” Lazar said. “We need to make sure we have someone up there who will not legislate from that bench.”

Waukesha County Judge K. Scott Wagner said Lazar possesses the temperament, intellect and respect for the law the Wisconsin Supreme Court needs at this time. The two first met as private practice attorneys on a commercial litigation case in 1989. She encouraged Wagner to run for judge last year, he said. 

“She really is very common sense. She understands the role of the court,” Wagner said in an interview. “I don’t think people understand how the courts are supposed to work. They really are the nonpartisan referee, and even in my brief career on the bench, I’ve had to say, ‘Look, this is not a law I would have written, but it’s a law that exists, so I’m going to apply it.’ You’re like the ref. I think she gets that.” 

At recent campaign stops in central Wisconsin, Taylor describes the race as a chance to expand a “pro-democracy” majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. A strong court can protect the state from future attacks on the elections, she told the room in Wautoma, highlighting the court’s 4-3 split decision in 2020 that upheld Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin over challenges from Donald Trump’s campaign. 

“It was a valid election, and our state Supreme Court rejected those efforts to overturn our election, but only by one vote. That’s it,” Taylor said. “We have to have a court that protects our democracy and stands up for our elections. The attacks on our elections are not going to stop.” 

Lazar recently faced criticism about her response to that case in an interview with PBS Wisconsin in which she declined to comment on how she would have ruled in the case because the Trump campaign could come before the state Supreme Court in the future.

Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, who has endorsed Taylor’s campaign, said in an interview Taylor has a unique understanding of creating laws and how they impact real people. Plus, she said, Taylor’s legislative experience would bring an expertise that does not exist among justices on the court at this time. 

“I believe that the people of Wisconsin deserve a justice on their Supreme Court who is prepared, that they have a justice who has the depth and breadth of legal and life experience that Chris Taylor has,” Karofsky said. “And they deserve to have someone who remembers every single day that the cases that come before us involve real people with real issues. Chris, quite frankly, checks every single one of those boxes.” 

Taylor has held a significant advantage over Lazar in fundraising, but with less attention on this race than past elections, both judges still have to turn out voters across the state. In February, registered voters surveyed by the Marquette University Law School Poll indicated they know little about the race and were largely undecided. 

The Marquette poll found only 6% of registered voters said they had heard a lot about the state Supreme Court race, 55% said they had heard a little and 38% said they had heard nothing. At the same time in 2025, the poll found 39% of registered voters had heard a lot about the race, 42% heard a little about the election and 19% had heard nothing at all. 

Another poll is scheduled for release on Tuesday, just two weeks before Election Day, and could provide a clearer picture of voter moods. Both candidates were scheduled to appear at a debate March 25 night hosted by WISN 12 at the Marquette University Law School. The debate was rescheduled for April 2 due to a health issue.

Lazar wants to change Wisconsin’s Supreme Court elections

Lazar did not immediately jump into remarks on the Supreme Court race as she stood before guests at the meet-and-greet event in Germantown. Instead, she grabbed the campaign yard signs of Appeals Court candidate Anthony LoCoco and Washington County Circuit Court candidate Grant Scaife and placed them alongside her own at the front of the banquet hall. 

She highlighted LoCoco, an attorney for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty who is running unopposed for an open seat on the 2nd District Court of Appeals, where Lazar serves, due to the retirement of the lone liberal judge Lisa Neubauer. She complimented Scaife for challenging Washington County judge Gordon Leech, who Evers appointed in 2025. 

Lazar endorsed both men and praised their campaigns before diving into the details of her own race. It takes “a lot of courage” to run for office, she told the audience. 

Lazar considered the Supreme Court as a future endeavor, but Bradley’s retirement announcement in August changed her timeline. Former Waukesha County judge Kathryn Foster, whose judicial chambers were next to Lazar’s, said she could see Lazar was meant for the Supreme Court early in her time on the bench.

“As good as she is with people, I think she really loves to research and write,” Foster said. “And that’s what that job is.”

In September, Lazar spent time discussing a potential campaign with her family and friends. She looked at the current court and the “overboard” nature of the 2025 election and said: “I can do better than this.”

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination that month was a key part in the decision-making process, Lazar said. 

“There was a lot of discussion in my family about should that be a reason why I don’t run,” she said in an interview. “And actually that was the impetus for me to say I’d made up my mind that I was running because we cannot let people scare us away from doing the right thing.” 

Lazar entered the race in October, four months after Taylor launched her campaign. It’s been an uphill climb. Lazar has struggled to compete with Taylor’s fundraising numbers, even with $20,000 contributions each from Republican donors Diane Hendricks and Liz Uihlein. In the first month of this year, Taylor raised $750,000 from more than 10,600 individual donors to Lazar’s $183,000 from 353 donors. The final campaign finance reports before the election are due next week.

Still, Lazar said she remains optimistic. The February Marquette Poll showed Taylor seven points ahead of Lazar among likely voters. But 62% said they were undecided. 

Lazar said she has tried to run a more traditional campaign focused on judicial background and experience. 

“We are supposed to talk about who is the better candidate judicially, who has more experience in the judiciary and who has the better judicial philosophy,” Lazar told supporters. “And I’ll give you the answers: me.” 

Taylor driven by helping others

Inside the Portage County Democratic Party office in Stevens Point, where the walls are papered with old campaign signs, Taylor stopped to talk with nearly every person in the room. 

A man stuffing envelopes mentioned gerrymandering to Taylor. The state Supreme Court can “protect democracy” and hold lawmakers accountable for unfair maps that “don’t lift some people’s votes up and make them more important than other people’s votes,” she said.

A campaign staffer hoping to keep the day on schedule tapped Taylor’s elbow to move her along, but Taylor likes to talk. 

“One more,” she responded, turning to shake another woman’s hand. 

Taylor told the crowds she met on a Saturday across central Wisconsin communities that she’s driven by a love of people and standing up for injustice. It started as a child when she was bothered by bullies and continued through her work for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and her years in the Legislature, she said.

“Being in the Legislature was a lot like being an attorney in private practice and working for Planned Parenthood, because I was really an advocate for my constituents,” Taylor said. 

Taylor’s legislative record includes support of bipartisan efforts such as the Safe at Home Act, which gives victims of domestic violence an assigned address for mail that is not their actual address. Taylor was the top Assembly Democrat on the bill, which was introduced in 2015 and led by then-Sen. Scott Fitzgerald and Rep. Joel Kleefisch, both Republicans.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin has hit Taylor for voting against crime victims during her time in the Legislature. A press release points to bills Taylor voted against on intimidating victims of domestic violence, which the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence opposed because it focused on harsher penalties rather than other reforms to the criminal justice system. Republicans also noted Taylor’s opposition to a bill on residency requirements for “sexually violent offenders,” which included an amendment that preempted local ordinances. 

The party also criticized Taylor’s votes in 2017 and 2019 against Marsy’s Law, a constitutional amendment on strengthening the rights of crime victims during the judicial process. A campaign spokesperson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last year that Taylor voted against the amendment because the state already had protections for crime victims. 

Shannon Barry, who has worked in the field of domestic violence support for 27 years, first crossed paths with Taylor in meetings about the Safe at Home Act. Barry recalled Taylor asking thoughtful questions and listening to what would make victims of domestic violence safer. 

“I think she really tries to ensure that whatever she is doing is aligning with the needs of people and their rights, and wanting to make sure that people have the ability to achieve their highest potential,” Barry said. 

Taylor said she left advocacy behind to transition to the bench, but she believes her time in the Legislature has made her a better judge. She understands the role of each branch of government and how the Legislature functions, she said, which helps when the Court of Appeals has to determine the intent of state lawmakers. 

Her work remains driven by how the law and the court can help others, she said. 

“The main motivator in my life is that I care deeply about people,” she said. “That has motivated me for as long as I can remember, and I think people deserve a court that is going to protect them and stand up for them, not the most powerful.” 

Two judges, two paths: Here’s what sets the Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates apart 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.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case to determine if a migrant on Mexico’s side of a border crossing with the United States can legally apply for asylum when arriving at a U.S. port of entry.

The case, which stems from a policy during President Donald Trump’s first term that denied migrants the opportunity to present for asylum, is meant to settle if Customs and Border Protection officers are allowed to refuse to process an asylum seeker who walks up to a port of entry.

A 2019 memorandum created what was known as the metering or “turn back” policy that resulted in border officials physically turning away asylum seekers before they could enter the country. The policy was based on an argument that migrants must be in the United States to apply for asylum and that simply arriving at a border crossing did not qualify.

A 2020 investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that up to 680 migrants per day were turned around as a result of the policy. 

The Trump administration last year asked the high court to review a 2024 split decision from a panel of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that affirmed a lower court’s order finding the policy violated administrative procedure law. 

The lower court found that the “turn back policy” was illegal because CBP had a duty to inspect and process asylum seekers arriving at ports of entry. 

The Supreme Court said in November it had decided to take the case, Noem v. Al Otro Lado.

Border doesn’t count, government says

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in briefs that a person has only arrived in the country once they are on U.S. soil.

“In ordinary English, a person ‘arrives in’ a country only when he comes within its borders,” Sauer wrote. “An alien thus does not ‘arrive in’ the United States while he is still in Mexico.”

He also argued that the appeals court decision interferes with the president’s “ability to manage the southern border” and set immigration policy.

“Before this litigation, border officials had repeatedly addressed migrant surges by standing at the border and preventing aliens without valid travel documents from entering,” Sauer said. 

“The decision below declares that practice unlawful, on the theory that aliens stopped on the Mexican side of the border have a statutory right to apply for asylum in the United States and to be inspected by federal immigration officers.” 

“The decision thus deprives the Executive Branch of a critical tool for addressing border surges and for preventing overcrowding at ports of entry along the border,” he continued.

“For people fleeing persecution the stakes are literally life and death,” said Melissa Crow, one of the attorneys representing Al Otro Lado, an organization that provides legal and humanitarian assistance to refugees and migrants, and a class of asylum seekers, who spoke to reporters before oral arguments. 

No current or future implications

Crow, who has represented Al Otro Lado since the initial challenge to the metering policy in 2017, said “there is no reason to do this” because the policy the Trump administration is challenging has been defunct since the Biden administration ended it in 2021.

Because the federal government rescinded the metering policy before the lower court could enter a final judgment, the brief from Al Otro Lado argues that the challenge presented to the justices “thus has almost no present implications, and likely no future implications either.”

“The government nonetheless urges the Court to grant review just in case it decides at some point in the future to reinstate metering,” according to the brief from advocates.

The challengers of the policy also argue it could give the administration another tool in its immigration crackdown.

“While this case focuses on one defunct policy, we have no doubt the administration is seeking a decision that will give them even more leeway to restrict the rights of people fleeing persecution,” Crow said. 

Crow said she opposed the review by the justices, adding that “there are many other restrictions on the books that are preventing migrants from seeking asylum,” that should be addressed. 

The Rev. Liz Theoharis, the executive director at the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, also briefed reporters. She leads a coalition of 31 faith groups that have submitted a brief in support of the groups and asylum seekers challenging the Trump administration’s move to overturn a court decision that blocked the metering policy.  

“Every major faith tradition makes protecting the stranger a core value,” Theoharis said. “Protecting and welcoming the immigrant is one of Jesus’s first and most powerful teachings.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices on Monday appeared skeptical of the validity of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, in a case that could potentially affect hundreds of thousands of voters during the upcoming midterm elections.

The high court heard arguments on whether federal law overrides a Mississippi law that requires mail-in ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within five business days of the election. Fourteen states have similar laws, which extend a “grace period” to ballots that arrive through the mail after polls close.

Several conservative justices raised concerns with allowing ballots to arrive after Election Day, including whether voters could recall ballots once they’ve shipped them but before they arrive at election offices. Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned whether late-arriving ballots risk undermining election confidence.

“‘The longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry the election has been stolen,’” Kavanaugh said, quoting from an analysis by a New York University law professor.

The case comes before the Supreme Court at a moment of broader attacks against mail-in voting. Four Republican-led states eliminated their ballot arrival grace periods last year. And Congress is mulling proposals that would restrict voting by mail amid a sprawling debate in the U.S. Senate over legislation demanded by President Donald Trump that would impose sweeping new voter restrictions nationwide. That legislation, known as the SAVE Act, is unlikely to pass because of the filibuster.

The Republican National Committee is challenging Mississippi’s grace period law. The party contends a longstanding federal law that sets the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as Election Day for federal offices preempts state laws that allow ballots cast by Election Day, but received later, to count.

Paul Clement, an attorney for the Republican National Committee, argued the prospect that the outcome of an election could change because of ballots arriving after Election Day would be unacceptable to losing candidates. After the 2020 election, President Donald Trump demanded election officials not count ballots that came in after Election Day. States kept counting ballots.

“If you have an election and the election is going to turn on late-arriving ballots in a way that means what everybody kind of thought was the result on Election Day ends up being the opposite a week later, 21 days later, the losers are not going to accept that result. Full stop,” Clement told the justices.

Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican who is defending the state law, argues that federal law allows ballots cast by Election Day to be received later. In legal filings, attorneys for the secretary argue both legal and historical precedent support his position. States may decide that voters have made their final choices when ballots are submitted to state officials rather than when they’re received, according to Watson.

On Monday, the justices appeared divided along ideological lines, with conservative justices skeptical of the grace periods and liberal justices more sympathetic. Conservatives hold a 6-3 majority on the court.

“It seems to me that we have a very long history of states having a variety of different ballot receipt deadlines, to include after Election Day,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the court’s liberal members.

Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart told the court the dispute is over whether Congress in an 1845 law blocked states from counting ballots cast by Election Day but received later. “No one challenged it until now,” Stewart said.

At least 725,000 ballots were postmarked by Election Day 2024 and arrived within a legally accepted post-election window, The New York Times has reported, citing election officials in 14 of 22 states and territories where late-arriving ballots were accepted that year.

About 30% of voters cast a mail ballot in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in October 2024 that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day. Trump likewise issued an executive order last year that attempted to require that mail ballots be received by the end of Election Day and to impose other election changes, but much of the order has been blocked by federal courts.

Rick Hasen, a professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law, wrote on his Election Law Blog that it was clear from Monday’s arguments that the Supreme Court will be closely divided, “and the case could come out either way.” A decision is expected later in the spring or early summer.

Caleb Hays, chief policy counsel at the Center for Election Confidence, a conservative-leaning legal advocacy group that opposes ballot grace periods, said his organization was pleased that the justices appeared to pick up on the need for a clear end to the voting period. He also welcomed the justices raising the issue of recalling ballots when they are delivered through the mail or by a third-party service like FedEx.

“That brings into question some of the arguments we saw from (Mississippi) on a ballot being final when it is cast and cast includes when it is deposited in a mailbox,” Hays said in an interview.

As the legal challenge made its way through the courts over the past two years, some Republican-led states moved to eliminate their grace periods. Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio and Utah last year moved to require all or nearly all ballots to be in the hands of election officials on Election Day to count.

The states that continue to extend grace periods for ballots arriving after Election Day are Alaska, California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia.

Some local election officials have urged the Supreme Court to uphold ballot grace periods. A decision that strikes down state laws’ grace periods would increase the administrative burdens on many election officials, said a collection of election officials and local governments in California, Massachusetts and Washington in an amicus brief.

“(Grace periods) enable administrators in large and small jurisdictions to do their essential work in a timely and reasonable manner,” the brief says.

If the Supreme Court requires that ballots must arrive on or before Election Day, Clement suggested election officials would have enough time to prepare ahead of November. He said such a decision wouldn’t violate the Purcell principle, a Supreme Court doctrine holding that major changes to election policy and practice shouldn’t be made just before an election because voters could get confused. 

The federal law at issue pertains to general elections, not primary elections, he noted — meaning the court’s decision would apply only to the November election.

“There’s plenty of time,” Clement said.

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Chris Taylor was a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood and a Democratic legislator before she became a judge. Her path reflects the changing nature of judicial races in Wisconsin.

The post Chris Taylor says her time as an advocate prepared her for the Wisconsin Supreme Court appeared first on WPR.

Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar has described herself as an underdog in an era that's seen liberals run the tables in elections for the state's highest court, but says she's beaten the odds before. Supreme Court races have become highly partisan, but she says what people really need is someone "geeky and law nerdy enough" like her to "live and breathe the law" during their 10 year term on the state's highest bench.

The post Maria Lazar leaning on judicial experience in run for Wisconsin Supreme Court appeared first on WPR.

For the third state Supreme Court election in a row, the conservative supported candidate is running a campaign based largely on accusations that the liberal candidate will be a partisan actor on the bench. But this year, the target of that accusation, who is running to secure a 5-2 liberal majority on the Court, served as a Democrat in the Wisconsin Assembly for nine years  and previously worked as the state policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. 

“I don’t come with a political agenda to the bench,” says Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, who, after serving in the Assembly, was appointed to the Dane County Circuit Court by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and then elected to the District IV Court of Appeals.  “My agenda is to make sure every person has justice under the law, to make sure that everyone’s held accountable when they violate the law, regardless of how powerful or privileged they are and to be independent. And I saw in the Legislature how important it was to have an independent court. You don’t want a court to be a rubber stamp for any party or the Legislature or the federal government.” 

Taylor’s opponent, Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, has spent more time as a judge and throughout the campaign has accused Taylor of being a partisan actor. 

Lazar’s initial race for the Court of Appeals and her race this year have involved the support of some of the state’s most prominent election deniers. Taylor said that support and Lazar’s ruling in favor of the Wisconsin Voter Alliance are important signals for a race whose winner will likely be involved in deciding election law challenges in the 2028 presidential race. 

“I certainly don’t have confidence that she would act to protect our elections if it didn’t go the way that the right wing wants it to go,” she told the Examiner. “So yes, I would be very worried about that, and people should with her record, and they should have no such worry with me, because I will make sure that unmeritorious attacks on our elections are struck down or are rejected.” 

After the 2023 and 2025 campaigns for the Court set national records for judicial campaign fundraising, the 2026 race between Taylor and Lazar is comparatively sleepy. Taylor said at a forum hosted by Marquette Law School Wednesday that it’s probably a good thing that the temperature has been brought down a bit on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

But with less money involved — and the ideological lean of the Court not at stake — less attention has been paid to the race. A Marquette Law poll released last month found that Taylor had a slight lead in the race, but that most people had not yet started paying attention or learned who either candidate was. 

Taylor said she believes her campaign’s work over the past month has changed that, and that Wisconsin voters are “overwhelmed” by the state of the country. 

“The people [of Wisconsin] are so engaged in government. They are hungry for a government that works for them. They are hungry for a court that stands up for them and protects their rights,” Taylor said at the Marquette event. “Now I will say I think people are overwhelmed. I really do. I think they’re overwhelmed because it’s hard right now. I think working families are struggling with high costs, gas prices have gone up so much. You know, there’s a lot going on in the world. Sometimes it feels very overwhelming. It’s very hard to see sometimes where you can make a difference and what you should be doing. But I tell people, this is a way to make a difference, is show up and vote.” 

She said that if elected, she wants the Court to be better at engaging with regular Wisconsinites, pointing to oral arguments the Court held recently in Richland County rather than its Madison chambers as an example of something that should happen more. She also said that the Court needs to take more cases — a regular critique of the liberal-majority Court is that its caseload has dropped significantly. 

“I have a duty to be independent, but I do not want to be isolated from the public,” she said. “I’m part of the community, and I want to be out in the community, doing what I can to do my part to make sure people know what we do in the judiciary, we have confidence in what we do. I think the more we can talk about it and invite people in, the more confidence people will have in our process.” 

Both candidates in this year’s race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court have served as circuit and appeals court judges. But Taylor says the difference between them is that she’s “never been reversed” by a higher court. 

But Taylor points to the instances in which Lazar’s decisions have been overturned as evidence that the former Waukesha County judge is more likely to tilt her rulings toward one side. 

“The only person, though, who has brought politics to the bench is my opponent,” Taylor told the Wisconsin Examiner. “And you look at the cases she has decided and thankfully been reversed on and you can see it.” 

Last year, the Supreme Court overturned Lazar’s decision in a lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, a group that has been heavily involved in the effort to discredit Wisconsin’s election administration system since the 2020 election. The group had sued to force the release of voter registration files for people who had been declared incompetent to vote by a judge. 

A previous appeals court decision had ruled the records weren’t able to be released, yet in a second lawsuit Lazar ruled otherwise — even though Wisconsin’s appeals courts don’t have the authority to overturn precedent. 

“I have never seen that be done on the Court of Appeals. My colleagues, who’ve been there, some of them, over a decade, have never seen such a blatant disregard of precedent,” Taylor said. “Maria Lazar put her thumb on the scale. She didn’t like the result. She has brought politics to this bench.” 

Taylor told the Examiner that in an era in which people across Wisconsin are worried about the Trump administration’s effects on their livelihoods and safety, the exact ideological swing of the Court is less important than having a Court that isn’t afraid to stand up on behalf of the Wisconsin people.

“People don’t care about what the ideology is on the court, they want justices who are going to protect their rights, who are going to stand up for our democracy and our elections, stand up to the federal government and make sure people get justice,” she said. “That’s what they want. That’s what my opponent does not understand. People want justices that are going to be fair and are going to protect them and have their back. My opponent has not ever done that in her life. That is not her priority like it is for me, it’s not ever been her priority.”

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WASHINGTON — Arizona coffee roaster Gabe Hagen is wondering if he’ll ever recoup the tens of thousands of dollars he paid in tariffs to import beans from the world’s major coffee-growing regions in South America, Africa and the Indo-Pacific.

Weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs as illegal, Hagen is among an army of small business owners who are unsure if they’ll be made whole after a year of increasing costs and uncertainty.

“I’m in the process right now trying to consolidate all of my invoices … because I need the money back — if they’re going to give it back,” Hagen told States Newsroom in an interview.

“A pallet of coffee would cost us 5 to 6 to $7,000 if we had a bag or two of really high-grade in there. Post tariffs, our cheapest pallet was around $8,000, and it went anywhere from 8 to $10,000 or $11,000 per pallet of coffee,” he said. 

How the government will refund the roughly $166 billion in tariffs Trump triggered under a 1970s emergency economic powers statute is slowly coming to light in court documents. 

Nearly 2,000 companies filed suit for tariff refunds in the U.S. Court of International Trade, with many lining up even before the highly anticipated 6-3 Supreme Court decision.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s four-step refund process for businesses is anywhere from 40% to 80% complete, depending on the step, according to a court-mandated update filed March 12 with the Court of International Trade. 

Justices leave it to the lower courts

The justices, not giving guidance on refunds, left the matter to the lower courts in their Feb. 20 ruling that invalidated the sweeping tariffs Trump unilaterally imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. 

The president declared various emergencies under the statute during his first year in office. 

From fentanyl smuggling, to trade imbalances, to political disputes, he used each declared crisis to impose steep taxes on imports. 

Shifting sometimes day to day, tariffs reached as high as 50% on Brazilian and Indian goods after Trump declared emergencies over the prosecution of a political ally and over the use of Russian oil, respectively.

U.S. importers saw tariffs spike as high as 145% on Chinese goods during a tit-for-tat trade war sparked by Trump’s declaration of a trade imbalance emergency. The duties largely settled at a roughly 50% effective rate on several products after the trade war and negotiations with the world’s second-largest economy. 

The Trump administration has since sought different pathways to collect tariffs, including almost immediately instituting temporary import taxes under a different 1970s trade statute. 

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has also commenced widespread investigations into dozens of the largest U.S. trading partners that could trigger new tariffs, depending on findings.

‘Survived, but barely’

The rollercoaster ride was enough to almost bring down Busy Baby, a Minnesota-based baby product company that manufactures several patented designs in China.

Busy Baby owner Beth Benike, who shared her experience with States Newsroom in February, is now suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to recoup money lost.

Matthew Platkin, former New Jersey attorney general and Benike’s lawyer, said Benike’s business “survived, but barely.” 

“She had to keep merchandise overseas because she couldn’t afford to pay to bring them here. And when she didn’t get product, she wasn’t getting paid, she wasn’t making money,” Platkin said in an interview with States Newsroom.  

“She had opportunities lined up for expansion. She was going to hire new folks. That didn’t happen, and that was because of one thing: the president’s illegal tariffs,” he said.

Benike’s complaint does not specify a dollar amount, but Platkin said, “It’s substantial, especially for a business of her size.”

“We’re still going through and assessing the full impact of the tariffs on her, but rest assured, even for a small business, it’s tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum,” Platkin said.

“The federal government should just refund these folks their money with interest, period. Like, this shouldn’t even require litigation. They were caught taking illegal tariffs from millions of businesses,” he said.

$166 billion collected

Federal Judge Richard Eaton, who sits on the bench for the Court of International Trade, ordered administration customs officials in early March to stop collecting the tariffs deemed illegal under IEEPA, and to recalculate any past duties that included them.

Eaton granted the March 5 order in the tariff refund lawsuit brought by Atmus Filtration, a Nashville, Tennessee-based company. 

The judge, however, outlined that orders in the Court of International Trade are “universal” for all tariff refunds owed — meaning the trade cases are not subject to the Supreme Court’s 2025 finding in a separate immigration case that universal rulings are impermissible.

Businesses the size of Busy Baby to behemoths like Costco and FedEx have paid tariffs to the U.S. government. Many, but not all, have sued.

Customs officials, in a March 6 court filing, declared any refund process would take at least 45 days to be functional. According to the filing, as of early March the agency had collected approximately $166 billion in IEEPA tariffs from 330,000 American importers.

Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, research associate for trade policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, said as the clock ticks on tariff refunds, interest is accruing.

“The refunds are not necessarily coming soon and that has big implications, obviously, for taxpayers, but I think most importantly for the companies that are relying on this money to literally keep their doors open,” Obregon said.

He and colleagues calculated the government’s interest payments on the refunds owed totals about $700 million more with each passing month.

Barton O’Brien, who told States Newsroom last month his dog apparel company ate the tariff costs rather than raise prices, said he’s “certainly not counting on a refund anytime soon” as the administration “seems pretty dead set” on not giving them.

“I expect they will drag out the process in the courts for as long as they can,” he said in a written response to States Newsroom on March 9. “If we get one, great… It’s a bonus. But still won’t cover the hole left by the tariffs.” 

“Also, as a small business we’re not in a position to fight the administration, so I’m happy to sit back and let … other Fortune 500 companies with an army of lawyers fight this one out on our behalf.  If they win, we’ll all get refunds,” said O’Brien, who works with manufacturers in China and India.

‘Do the right thing’

Shawn Phetteplace, national campaigns director for the advocacy group Main Street Alliance, said his organization will continue to apply legal and public pressure to ensure small businesses recoup the money.

“I would just say that the administration should do the right thing and return the money, and they also should stop trying to find cute, creative ways to institute new tariffs that are also going to be illegal and struck down,” he said.

Two dozen Democratic-led states have already sued the administration in the Court of International Trade over the new tariffs Trump announced immediately after his Supreme Court loss. 

The lawsuit, led by Oregon, also includes Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Small businesses and Democratic-led states were instrumental in the Supreme Court’s February decision striking down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs.

States Newsroom reached out to the Trump administration for comment but did not receive a reply.

PBS Wisconsin's "Here & Now" sat down with the candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court to ask them about an important Supreme Court decision from the 2020 election and see how they would have ruled.

The post Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates offer different takes on 2020 election lawsuit appeared first on WPR.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Monday said it will hear oral arguments in April in two cases brought by immigrants hailing from Syria and Haiti after the Trump administration tried to end their temporary protections, initially granted because their countries had been deemed too dangerous for return. 

Monday’s order consolidates two cases, one brought on behalf of 6,000 Syrians with Temporary Protected Status and another from 350,000 Haitians. 

The justices also declined to grant the Trump administration’s request to stay a lower court order that prevented the end of TPS for those two countries, meaning that protections from deportation will remain for now for those immigrants. 

The justices will hear arguments for the cases in the last week of April, with final briefs due by April 20. A specific date has not yet been set.

Congress created TPS to allow immigrants from countries dealing with war, natural disasters, political violence or other instabilities to remain and work in the United States on a temporary basis, ranging from six months to 18 months. 

The TPS holders who sued the Trump administration have argued that their countries’ conditions were not considered when the Department of Homeland Security determined their protections should end. 

The Trump administration has sought to cancel legal protections for immigrants, so far revoking TPS status for 13 of the 17 countries that were designated at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. 

Those 13 countries are Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.  

The four remaining countries with TPS expiring this year without an extension are El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine.

Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, the conservative candidate in the race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, has built her campaign around the idea that she will be an independent justice while her opponent, Appeals Court Judge and former Democratic legislator Chris Taylor, will be a partisan actor on the bench. 

Lazar has frequently said on the campaign trail that she’s “never been a member of a political party” — a claim aided by the fact that Lazar has never served in partisan office and Wisconsin voters don’t register their party affiliation — while at a recent event Taylor, who served in the state Assembly for nine years, affirmed that she’s a Democrat. 

The argument of the Lazar campaign closely mirrors the arguments made by the last two conservative candidates for the Court. 

Last year, former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel frequently said that as a justice he’d be like a baseball umpire, simply calling balls and strikes about the law. During the 2023 race, former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly said that if he was elected Wisconsin would have “the rule of law” while if his opponent Janet Protasiewicz were elected Wisconsin would have the “rule of Janet.” 

Schimel and Kelly both brought long histories of work on behalf of the Republican party, its allies and its causes to their races. Both rode the argument that they would be impartial arbiters of the law to double digit losses. 

But in both of the last two Wisconsin Supreme Court campaigns, the ideological balance of the Court was at stake after years in which Republicans had held control of most of the state’s political levers. Those races broke fundraising records and drew national attention.

Lazar is making her argument this year in a much sleepier race as part of an effort to prevent the Court’s liberals from securing a 5-2 majority. Lazar says it’s important to protect ideological diversity on the Court. 

“You don’t want a court that has a point of view, one point of view,” Lazar said at an event in Brown County earlier this month. “You might as well have one judge, one justice. You need people there to be that diversity of thought.”

But like Kelly and Schimel, Lazar’s opponents have argued she’s not as non-partisan as she claims. 

Lazar has been endorsed by some of the state’s leading anti-abortion groups, prominent 2020 election deniers and all six of Wisconsin’s Republican members of the House of Representatives. She’s received financial support from major GOP donors including Richard and Liz Uihlein. She has also regularly appeared with far right national political figures and has spoken to right-wing groups across the state. 

Her campaign staff includes consultants with deep ties to Wisconsin Republican politics. 

“I don’t really care if you’re a member of the Green Party, the Constitution Party, or any party,” Lazar told the Wisconsin Examiner. “You cannot be a member of a party at any point in time and be a judge, because everyone will rightly say, ‘Where are your interests? Are you ruling for the law, or are you ruling for your party?’”

As an attorney for the state Department of Justice, she defended Republican lawmakers in a lawsuit alleging they violated the state’s open meetings laws while passing the controversial anti-union measure that became Act 10. She also defended the gerrymandered 2011 electoral maps that locked in Republican control of the Legislature for more than a decade. 

At an event earlier this month, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky said that as a Department of Justice attorney, Lazar carried “the flag of the right-wing interests.” 

Opponents have also pointed to appeals court decisions in which Lazar has sided with 2020 election conspiracy theorists trying to gain access to private voter information and with corporate interests trying to weaken the state’s toxic spills law. The District 2 Court of Appeals on which Lazar sits is considered the most reliably conservative appeals court in the state. 

After the 2020 presidential election, the state Supreme Court, then controlled by a conservative majority, ruled in a 4-3 decision not to hear a lawsuit from the campaign of President Donald Trump challenging Wisconsin’s election results. 

With the Trump White House signaling a willingness to interfere in the conduct of state election systems, Democrats and left-leaning organizations have argued the Supreme Court race this year will build an important barrier against Republicans copying the 2020 playbook in the 2028 presidential election. 

Earlier this month, Lazar told PBS Wisconsin she wouldn’t weigh in on the merits of that Trump 2020 case, but that she believes “every legal, valid vote should be counted.” 

But in the election disputes that have simmered in Wisconsin during the six years since Trump’s Stop the Steal effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the debate has often centered exactly on the question of what counts as a legal, valid vote — a question that the Supreme Court may be called on to answer. 

Lazar said it would be shortsighted for a judge or justice to decide an election case “because it helps the side that you most personally align with.”

“A vote is a vote, and I’m not going to get into all the ins and outs of what judges have to look at when they’re determining what’s a legal, valid vote,” she told the Examiner. “But my concern is — and I’m seeing it not just in Wisconsin, I’m seeing it nationally — I’m seeing that this is being treated like a game. It’s a very serious right, and I think it’s an obligation that people vote, and I don’t like seeing anyone disenfranchised for any reason whatsoever.” 

The effort to cast doubt on election results was sparked by Trump and led in Wisconsin by Republicans and former conservative Supreme Court justices Currently, Republican members of Congress are debating a bill that could drastically restrict access to the ballot to people unable to produce a certified copy of a birth certificate or other documents proving U.S. citizenship. But Lazar said she sees judges on both sides trying to help their side win. 

“I don’t like the fact that courts and justices and judicial candidates are making these arguments and winking and nudging on both sides and saying, ‘Oh, if you elect me, I’m going to make sure that your party is going to win,’ or ‘if you elect me, I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen, or this does.’ That’s inappropriate,” she said.

Observers representing a range of political views have lamented the massive amount of money that has flowed into Wisconsin’s Supreme Court races, which has accelerated the perception that the body is more partisan than it used to be.                                                

Under Wisconsin’s divided government, the Supreme Court has been regularly tasked with deciding disputes over the separation of power between the governor and Legislature. With an open race for governor and competitive legislative races across the state, November’s elections could result in one party trifecta control of the lawmaking branches or give state government a big shakeup that results in a still-divided government under a different layout. 

Lazar said a justice deciding these separation of power cases shouldn’t try to game out which party will be helped because in Wisconsin’s swing state politics, the shoe could just as quickly be on the other foot. 

“Be careful what you wish for,” she said. “You have to have a long view, and the courts really have the longest view. And we should be looking not to what helps someone today, but we should be saying, ‘how do we affect the appropriate law for generations?’”

In recent years, and especially since the start of Trump’s second term, conservative leaning candidates have not fared well in non-major elections. Democrats and left-leaning judges have performed far better when turnout is lower through a combination of higher motivation against a liberal base eager to cast a protest vote against the unpopular president’s party and the lower engagement in state and local politics among a Republican base that only turns out en masse when Trump is on the ballot. 

Lazar said she understands that’s a barrier she has to overcome. 

“It does seem to be non-major election years that the April elections seem to be a little sleepier, or they possibly even trend a little bit away from the more conservative candidate, or the more independent, in this case, candidate, and we recognize that,” she said. “Everyone in this state should be looking at this race and looking at what rights they have, and to making sure that they take steps so that they have someone that they can have faith in.” 

A Marquette Law School poll released in February found that a large swathe of Wisconsin voters still had very little information about the Supreme Court race. With six weeks before Election Day, 66% of voters said they were still undecided. Among those polled who had decided, Taylor had a slight edge. 

But despite Taylor’s slight lead in the poll, Lazar said her takeaway was that the Taylor campaign’s TV ads in the state’s largest metro areas had done little to move the public.

“My opponent has spent a lot of money, run a lot of ads and not gaining any traction,” Lazar said. “And I think it shows that the state of Wisconsin is saying we want to take a step back, maybe a little bit of election fatigue from last year, and we want to take a step back to really make a good, wise decision on who we want to give a 10-year term on this Court.”

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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.”

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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.