Wisconsin doesn’t require daily exercise for students.
Physical education must be given weekly to students in kindergarten through sixth grade and, for older middle school students, with “sufficient frequency and instructional time to meet the objectives outlined in the district’s curriculum plan.”
High school students must follow a curriculum “designed to build lifelong fitness habits.”
In 2024, GOP lawmakers as part of a child obesity task force introduced legislation to require 180 minutes of weekly “physical activity” for K-8 students. One lawmaker said the aim was to require movement, such as playing tennis, rather than teaching tennis.
Photo by Architect of the Capitol | U.S. government work via Flickr
The July jobs report released last Friday wasn’t pretty. It showed weaker than anticipated U.S. job growth in July, and there were substantial downward revisions of jobs numbers for May and June as well. Economists predicted a slowdown. The chaos of tariff threats has created substantial uncertainty, which is bad for the economy, and the tariffs that have gone into effect have raised prices. It’s no surprise, then, that we’re seeing a slowdown in jobs.
Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi noted on social media, “It’s no mystery why the economy is struggling; blame increasing U.S. tariffs and highly restrictive immigration policy. The tariffs are cutting increasingly deeply into the profits of American companies and the purchasing power of American households. Fewer immigrant workers means a smaller economy.”
But instead of reflecting on mistakes in economic policy or offering some austerity suggestion, like limiting U.S. children to two dolls each , President Donald Trump blamed the messenger, firing the government official in charge of the data release, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Erika McEntarfer. He baselessly asserted that the bad news was “concocted” and suggested that he knows better than the data. The economy is great, according to him, and he will find a commissioner to tell him so.
Trump’s approach is a disaster for economic decision making and for public trust. The BLS is an independent agency with a strong legacy of providing the data that businesses, analysts and policymakers need. Good economic decisions require reliable data. As the American Economics Association wrote: “The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity. Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions.”
The BLS monthly jobs report provides a timely snapshot of labor market dynamics which inform investing and hiring decisions as well as policy choices. BLS data also measures the rate of inflation through the consumer price index. The rising price of goods is not only a key economic indicator but also the scale by which Social Security payments are adjusted and a point of reference in private and union wage negotiations.
BLS data are essential to understanding what is going on in the economy, when a slowdown is emerging, and the cost of daily life. The independence and integrity of the agency, long assumed and supported by both parties, is now under attack.
Wisconsinites lived through something like this more than a decade ago. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker promised to create 250,000 jobs in his first term. He focused on the goal relentlessly, at least until it became clear that he would not meet it. (In fact, the Wisconsin economy didn’t even meet Walker’s first term goal across his two terms – adding just 233,000 jobs by the time he left office after serving for eight years.)
In the first years of Walker’s “relentless focus on jobs” under his administration’s tagline “Wisconsin is Open for Business,” the monthly numbers showed that Wisconsin’s economy was growing more slowly than the national labor market and neighboring states.
Walker blamed the data. He insisted that we wait instead for a federal source which was more reliable, but had a substantial time lag. As someone who watches this data, I can assure that this was the only time in my three-decade career when differences between monthly and quarterly sources of federal jobs data were a policy talking point.
But in the end, the data issue was just a distraction from the truth. Wisconsin was growing more slowly, and no amount of complaining about the data or waiting for another source on jobs could change that fact. Eventually, the Walker administration went silent on both the data and the promised 250,000 jobs.
Trump’s approach is worse than waiting for another source of data. His firing of the commissioner suggests that he’ll only accept data that confirms his narrative. And that makes it harder for any of us to trust any data the federal government is willing to release.
That’s bad for the economy and bad for democracy. As narrow and nerdy as this topic may seem, we all have an interest in facts and reliable data. We have had a government infrastructure capable of producing it. We lose it at our own peril.
Former Gov. Tommy Thompson hasn't ruled out a run in 2026, while former Gov. Scott Walker has. Thompson pictured talking to reporters at the Republican National Convention in 2024. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner) Walker on the floor during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention. (Photo by Joeff Davis)
While Wisconsin’s incumbent governor is opting out of seeking a third term, the open and growing field has led a couple of former governors to stir conversation about whether they will run again in 2026 or beyond.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ decision not to run makes 2026 the first open race for governor since 2010, when Scott Walker, then the Milwaukee County executive, defeated Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Former Gov. Jim Doyle, who served from 2003 to 2011, had declined to run for a third term.
Evers said he chose not to run again next year because he wants to spend more time with his family.
Former Gov. Tommy Thompson did not rule out a run for governor in 2026 while speaking with 620 WTMJ on Monday afternoon.
“Why not?” Thompson said in response to the question about whether he would run for governor. “I haven’t said no. There’s a lot of good candidates and I have no desire to get in the race, but the truth of the matter is, I’ll wait and see what’s out there.”
There are two declared Republican candidates in the race so far: Washington County Josh Schoemann and Whitefish Bay manufacturer Bill Berrien. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany has also been teasing a run for the last several weeks.
Only one Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, has officially launched her campaign since Evers’ announcement on July 24. Other potential candidates include Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Attorney General Josh Kaul, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.
Thompson is the only governor in Wisconsin to have been elected to four terms, serving from 1987 to 2001. Wisconsin is one of 13 states in the U.S. without term limits on governors, according to Ballotpedia.
Thompson left the office to serve as President George W. Bush’s Health and Human Services secretary. He also previously served as University of Wisconsin system president. This is not the first time that he has floated seeking a potential fifth term, having mentioned it in 2022.
Thompson said Monday that his wife and children would be opposed to him running for another term, but he signaled that he feels he would be up to the task. By the time the next term starts, Thompson would be 85.
“I’m in great physical health. My mind is sharp as hell. I’ve got things that I’d like to accomplish, but it’s way too early for me to make that decision, way too early,” Thompson said.
Walker, who served two terms as governor, recently said he wouldn’t be running for governor in 2026 after making cryptic posts on social media that pointed to potential nonconsecutive terms. He lost the office to Evers in a close election in 2018.
“I’m not going to be a candidate, at least not next year. It doesn’t mean I’ll never run again,” he said in a video posted to social media. Walker, who is 57, added that he is a “quarter century” younger than former President Joe Biden.
“Looking ahead, though, Tonette [Walker] and I will do everything we can at our home here in Wisconsin to ensure that we elect a common sense conservative as governor in next year’s election,” he said.
Walker said he would be continuing his work as president of Young America’s Foundation, aconservative nonprofit focused on youth, and emphasized that Republicans need to do better outreach to young voters.
Prior to Wisconsin adopting four-year terms for its governors, former Gov. Philip La Follette served his first term as governor from 1931 to 1933 as a Republican.
According to the National Governors Association, La Follette, the son of former U.S. Sen. “Fighting Bob” La Follette, spent a significant portion of his time in office seeking the expansion of public works, including highway construction, increased government control over the electric power and banking industries and helped set up an unemployment insurance program, which became a model for similar legislation in other states.
La Follette ran for another term in 1932 but was defeated by Democratic Gov. Albert G. Schmedeman.
After one term out of office, La Follette ran for governor again in 1934, this time as a third party candidate for the newly formed Progressive Party. He went on to serve a second and third term from 1935 to 1939.
For over a decade, Wisconsin has heard the same message from Republicans regarding full Medicaid expansion: Accepting 90% federal reimbursement to cover more low-income people will only set Wisconsin up for failure if the federal government abandons its part of the deal.
At first glance, President Donald Trump’s recently signed big bill appears to validate that argument. The 40 states that have fully expanded are now expected to lose billions of dollars in federal aid while getting tagged with additional administrative costs to create work requirements and eligibility assessments required in the bill.
But it turns out Wisconsin is still going to be subject to the new federal mandates without the higher federal reimbursement rate that expansion states will continue to receive. In other words, at a time when the Republican-controlled federal government is supposedly pulling out the rug from expansion states, Wisconsin is still left holding the bag.
A look back
Back in 2014, then-Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans made the controversial decision not to accept full Medicaid expansion.
At the time, Walker explained his goal “is to get more people out into the workplace, more people covered when it comes to health care and fewer people dependent on the government, not because we’ve kicked them out, but we’ve empowered them to take control of their own destiny.”
But he also argued that the federal government would eventually pull back on its commitment to fund Medicaid at 90%.
“That commitment is not going to be there and taxpayers all across America will be on the hook,” Walker said. “They are not going to be on the hook in Wisconsin.”
At the time, Wisconsin was one of 25 states not accepting expansion. Now, the state is one of the 10 remaining holdouts, with most of the others in the deep red South. Even reliably red states, like Arkansas and Louisiana, have accepted full expansion.
Instead of accepting full expansion, Wisconsin chose to cover individuals through BadgerCare, the state’s Medicaid-supported health insurance program for low-income residents set up by former Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican.
Walker and Republicans lowered Medicaid coverage to 100% of the federal poverty line from the previous 200% and eliminated the waiting list for childless adults. Those above the poverty line without employer-sponsored insurance could purchase it through the Affordable Care Act marketplace using federal subsidies, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
But Wisconsin taxpayers are paying more to cover individuals below the poverty line: 39.3% of costs rather than 10% under full Medicaid expansion. In 2023, Medicaid accounted for 15.7% of state taxpayer spending, according to the policy forum.
Under its approach, Wisconsin doesn’t have an eligibility gap like some states, something Republicans highlight as a reason the state doesn’t need to expand.
But that has come with a loss of federal funds. Over the past decade, Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services estimates, the state has spent about $2.6 billion more to cover the costs of a partial expansion compared with the projected cost under a federal expansion.
Under an expansion, more individuals would be able to access Medicaid. But the Wisconsin Policy Forum found it would have a somewhat modest impact on coverage levels — the percentage change in Medicaid enrollees would be 7.2%, compared with nearly 30% or more in other non-expansion states.
Work requirements still in effect under Trump bill
With the recent federal bill, Walker and other Republicans still argue Wisconsin was right not to accept federal expansion. The state is going to experience the impacts to a lesser extent than fully expanded states.
But because Wisconsin receives federal waivers for its Medicaid program, the state is still subject to some provisions under the new law, including the work requirements, eligibility determinations and provider taxes.
Under the new work requirements, individuals covered by Medicaid are required to prove they are working 80 hours per month — parents with dependent children or people who are medically frail are exempted.
As a result, some 230,000 Wisconsin residents could lose coverage while the state incurs administrative costs to account for the new requirements, according to an estimate from U.S. Senate Democrats based on data from the Congressional Budget Office.
The work requirements don’t stop at individuals covered by Medicaid alone; it also extends to coverage through marketplace subsidies, affecting over 200,000 Wisconsin residents.
Work requirements used to be required for Wisconsin residents to access coverage through federal waivers, but in 2021 then-President Joe Biden removed the work requirement.
The labor force participation rate has dipped from about 68% in 2017 to a little over 65% as of May 2025 but has remained higher than the national average, which is about 62%. Some reports suggest that decline is due to the aging workforce in the state.
Work requirements have also been found to increase the uninsured rate.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum reports that one of the main reasons work requirements may lead to higher uninsured rates is that they are confusing and time-consuming. Some people may choose to get rid of coverage altogether to avoid unnecessary paperwork.
What could happen with the federal bill?
The Kaiser Family Foundation also found that implementing work requirements will be costly for states, costing anywhere from $10 million to over $270 million, depending on the size of the state. DHS estimates the state will pay $6 million annually to implement work requirements, while receiving a lower federal match rate than fully expanded states to reimburse for administrative costs.
With a lower federal match rate, Wisconsin has increased Medicaid funding through hospital taxes, which the new state budget just increased from 1.8% to the federal maximum of 6% for the 2025-27 biennium budget.
Republican lawmakers in the state were quick to approve the hospital tax increase, despite their previous opposition to Medicaid expansion as a means for drawing down additional federal funding. If they hadn’t, the state’s 1.8% tax would have been frozen under Trump’s big bill. The increase will raise some $1 billion more annually in federal matching funds that the state can use to pay hospitals for care they provide Medicaid patients.
States that expanded will not lose the 90% federal match rate, but those like Wisconsin that didn’t will now miss out on an additional incentive to expand created during the Biden administration.
The incentive would have raised the federal match rate to 95% for two years, but was eliminated by Trump’s big bill. Instead Wisconsin will remain at about 60% reimbursement, while still facing the same bureaucratic requirements as expansion states.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Kristen Crowell, executive director of Fair Share America, speaks Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., the first stop for Fair Share America's bus campaign to oppose the Republican budget reconciliation bill currently in the U.S. Senate. (Photo courtesy of Fair Share America)
Over the next three weeks, a band of advocates in a bright green bus is traveling across the U.S. with a message aimed at members of Congress — and at the voters who live in their districts.
To the voters, the message is that they will be hurt by the Republican mega-bill taking shape in Washington — a bill that would extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 that primarily benefit the wealthy and pay for them by slashing Medicaid and other federal programs that critics of the measure argue broadly benefit the public.
To U.S. senators and representatives, the message is: Vote against the measure, or face the wrath of voters in 2026.
The bus trip was launched by Fair Share America, a coalition of groups focused on beating back attempts to extend the 2017 tax cuts, one of the signature pieces of legislation from President Donald Trump’s first term. The organization ismade up of unions, organizations favoring progressive taxation, and progressive social justice and policy groups.
Kristen Crowell of Wisconsin is executive director of Fair Share America, a coalition formed in 2024 to oppose extending the 2017 tax cuts enacted during President Donald Trump’s first term. (Photo courtesy of Fair Share America)
Fair Share America’s executive director is Kristen Crowell, who lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. In 2022 she helped lead a campaign in Massachusetts when voters approved a constitutional amendment that created a 4% surtax on earned income over $1 million.
“That increase is now generating $3 billion annually that is dedicated for education and transportation,” Crowell told the Wisconsin Examiner.
The Boston Globe reported that the campaign to pass the Massachusetts “millionaires’ tax” raised $27 million, nearly twice as much as the $14 million raised by business-backed opponents of the measure. Crowell said the campaign succeeded by appealing to voters on the issue of fairness.
“We know that when we ask the wealthy to pay a little bit more, to pay their fair share, we can fund the investments that our neighbors and families and communities deserve — and really importantly, right now in this moment, they need in order to to get ahead,” Crowell said in an interview.
Opposition group launched in 2024
The 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of this year. With that date on the calendar, Fair Share America launched in September 2024 to oppose renewing them.
“We started organizing before we knew the outcome of the election and were handed a different reality than we might have hoped for,” Crowell said.
Since then, the organization has helped “lead the pushback at the state level to make sure that constituents and the public understand what’s happening behind closed doors in Washington, D.C., and to really bring the fight to key districts and geographies across the country where lawmakers, in particular the GOP members of Congress, have shut out their constituents,” she said.
Thebus trip started on Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., stopped in Philadelphia on Sunday and will hit four more cities across Pennsylvania on Monday. Stops in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa follow. After that, the bus will double back on its route for three Wisconsin stops, in Racine and Oshkosh on Monday, June 30, and La Crosse on July 1.
In Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., a crowd rallies on Saturday, June 21, in support of the Fair Share America bus campaign opposing the federal budget reconciliation bill. (Photo courtesy of Fair Share America)
The schedule will continue through the middle of July, stopping in Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada before concluding in Bakersfield, California on July 14.
The tour isn’t the start of the organization’s campaign. Fair Share America and its partners with other advocacy groups have been holding town hall meetings in 33 states across the country, Crowell said — including one inRacine in April that featured former Social Security commissionerMartin O’Malley.
Crowell was at the Racine event, to which the local member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) was invited but didn’t show up. “Over 200 people came [from] across the political spectrum.” Crowell said.
At that town hall and other such events across the country, she’s seen energetic opposition to the new Trump administration as well as the priorities of the current Congress, she said.
“Fair Share America’s not speaking to one side of the aisle vs. the other,” Crowell said. “This is a populist moment.”
Public opposition to budget bill
Apoll on behalf of three of the coalition’s member groups found that even before they were given information about details of the GOP budget reconciliation bill, the American voters surveyed had a negative opinion of it.
According to the pollsters 38% of those surveyed said they support the bill, 46% said they oppose it and 16% said they don’t know enough to have an opinion.
Fewer than one-third of voters surveyed — 30% — have heard a lot about the bill. Another 40% have heard “just some” about it, and the remaining 30% said they’ve heard little or nothing about the measure.
The more people heard, however, the less they liked it, according to the report from the polling firm, Hart Research. Opposition increased among all groups after pollsters told people about various details — its changes to Medicaid and to SNAP federal nutrition aid, for example.
“By being in the rooms and town halls and knocking on doors here in Wisconsin, that is what we are hearing and seeing,” Crowell said.
With its slogan, “Stop the billionaire giveaway,” Fair Share America’s bus tour aims to amplify the bill’s cuts to programs that benefit the public and to center the message that its tax cuts favor the wealthy.
Congressional Republicans “have not engaged with their constituents” in Wisconsin and elsewhere about the reconciliation bill, Crowell said. Fair Share America’s goal is to break down the details in terms that people will understand and respond to.
“When you tell them what’s at stake, what’s coming down, they are furious and they want to know how to get in the fight,” Crowell said. “They want to know how to organize their three or four neighbors. So it is incumbent on all of us to shed light on the horrors of this reconciliation bill and do everything it takes to get the word out.”
Funding values and priorities
In Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has said he opposes the bill and has threatened to vote against it, criticizing it for not making deeper federal spending cuts.
While that’s the opposite of Fair Share America’s agenda, “voting ‘No’ is voting ‘No’ at the end of the day,” Crowell said.
She is skeptical that Johnson will follow through on his threat, however.
“When push comes to shove, I don’t think Sen. Johnson is going to cross the White House or cross GOP leadership. I expect him to fall in line,” she said. “But we’re here to push back and say, ‘Absolutely not. We will hold you to that No vote and we do want you to understand what the stakes are for your constituents.’”
While the campaign’s goal is to stop the bill, there’s a second message regardless of the outcome, Crowell said.
“We are building a movement that is strong and durable and it crosses partisan lines,” she said. “If they in fact do go ahead and pass this, there will be hell to pay for those members who abandoned and threw their constituents and their communities under the bus.”
Crowell said her more than two decades of activism started when, as a working mother, she opposed Milwaukee public school budget cuts. Her daughter, who was in kindergarten then, is now 29.
She went on to organize with “We Are Wisconsin,” the grass-roots coalition that sprang up in reaction to Act 10 — the 2011 law stripping most collective bargaining rights from most public employees, introduced and signed by Scott Walker in his first term as governor.
Act 10 was billed as a “budget repair bill.” Crowell said that working against it she saw clearly the connection between government budgets and policy.
“If progressives want to really win … and fund the things that we care about, we have to compete for what happens in the budget process,” Crowell said. “We have to compete for a fair and just tax code. We have to compete for the revenue that funds all of the issues that we care about, whether that’s health care or climate or education or child care.”
A budget “can be used either to fund our priorities and reflect our values or attack the things that we deeply care about,” Crowell said. With the federal budget reconciliation bill, “we’re watching the GOP members of Congress do exactly that — looking to further harm our communities through advancing this budget.”
A growing memorial for Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband stands Monday, June 16, 2025 at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
The horrific assassination of Minnesota’s Democratic legislative leader Melissa Hortman last weekend left people across the country in a state of shock and grief.
Derrick Van Orden held a press conference Sept. 9 to discuss crimes committed in his hometown by a Venezuelan immigrant. | (Screenshot via Zoom)
But just across the border from Hortman’s home state, Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden seized on the double murder of Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were shot dead in their home, and the near-fatal shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, to mock Democrats and try to score political points. Van Orden falsely characterized the suspected shooter, a right-wing religious fanatic on a mission to murder Democrats and abortion providers, as an anti-Trump protester who “decided to murder and attempt to murder some politicians that were not far Left enough for them.”
This wildly misleading analysis came straight out of the MAGA alternative reality machine on social media, where, Minnesota Reformer editor J. Patrick Coolican wrote, right-wing influencers began peddling misinformation about Hortman’s murder just hours after it happened.
Van Orden was not alone in helping to spread those lies. Wisconsin’s former Republican Gov. Scott Walker also did his part. In a now-deleted post on X, Walker wrote that if the assassination “ends up being done by an ultra-liberal activist … watch for many on the left to be silent or even justify it. Wrong!”
It is now clear that suspected murderer Boelter was a Republican who, as an evangelical Christian minister, gave sermons railing against abortion and LGBTQ people. Walker at least had the good sense to take down his post — lapsing into the silence he’d predicted “many on the left” would observe.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah was shamed by his colleagues into taking down a similarly callous post in which he blamed “Marxists” for the murders and appeared to gloat that it was a “nightmare” for Walz.
Van Orden, on the other hand, doubled down.
“I stand by my statement,” he wrote on X after U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan chastized him for replying to Walz’s remembrance of Hortman by saying that the Democratic governor is “stupid” and a “clown.” Van Orden responded to Pocan with an obscenity. That’s the post he stood by.
Van Orden, who attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington after President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election alongside the Capitol insurrectionists, is hardly a model of statesmanship. His boorish behavior in Washington on more than one occasion has embarrassed our state.
But there’s something more troubling going on here than one politician’s loutish behavior.
The horrifying political assassination in Minnesota is a direct result of the same MAGA disinformation machine that went into overdrive trying to distort the truth about the assassin’s aims. Van Orden is one of many Republicans who have hyped the idea that the U.S. is under attack from “criminal, illegal aliens” who were allowed by the Biden administration to “wander around the nation at their leisure.” (In fact, immigrants commit violent crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens, and Van Orden’s district is full of hardworking immigrants who lack legal status but without whom Wisconsin’s dairy industry would collapse.)
Republicans following Trump’s lead have stirred up a moral panic around immigration, abortion, LGBTQ people and other non-threats in increasingly hysterical terms. Their rhetoric laid the groundwork for actual physical violence. It has been used to justify the unprecedented spectacle of masked federal agents seizing people on U.S. streets and deporting them without due process, as well as the Trump administration’s outrageous manhandling and handcuffing of Judge Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee, Sen. Alex Padilla in California and a mayoral candidate and Comptroller Brad Lander in New York City.
Trump’s invitation to physical violence against his opponents and the press are a hit with his base. It seems inevitable that eventually someone would take him up on it.
Adding fuel to the fire, Trump’s MAGA minions have made his sociopathic callousness part of their brand. Trump refused to call Walz after the murders in Minnesota, and instead took a gratuitous swipe at the man who campaigned against him as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024, calling him “whacked out” and “a mess.”
“I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” Trump told reporters.
In a terse statement, Walz spokesperson Teddy Tschann explained why: “Governor Walz wishes that President Trump would be a President for all Americans, but this tragedy isn’t about Trump or Walz. It’s about the Hortman family, the Hoffman family, and the State of Minnesota, and the governor remains focused on helping all three to heal.”
What happened in Minnesota is a tragedy for all of us. It’s made worse by the lack of leadership from politicians who not only don’t have the wisdom and maturity to respond appropriately, but who, by failing to take responsibility for their actions, are actively propelling us toward a more terrible future.
A unanimous Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with the Democratic state attorney general Tuesday in a long-running battle over a law passed by Republicans who wanted to weaken the office in a lame duck legislative session more than six years ago.
The court ruled 7-0 that requiring the attorney general to get permission from a Republican-controlled legislative committee to settle certain civil lawsuits was unconstitutional. The law is a separation of powers violation, the court said.
The Republican-controlled Legislature convened a session in December 2018 after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul defeated Republican incumbents. The laws signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker on his way out the door weakened powers of both offices.
At issue in the case decided Tuesday was the attorney general’s power to settle civil lawsuits involving environmental and consumer protection cases as well as cases involving the governor’s office and executive branch. The new law required the Legislature’s budget committee, which is controlled by Republicans, to sign off on those settlements.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020, when controlled by conservatives, upheld all of the lame duck laws and ruled they did not violate the separation of powers principle. But the ruling left the door open to future challenges on how the laws are applied.
Kaul sued that year, arguing that having to seek approval for those lawsuit settlements violates the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. The Legislature argued that lawmakers have an interest in overseeing the settlement of lawsuits and that the court’s earlier ruling saying there was no separation of powers violation should stand.
Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, who won election to the state Supreme Court in April and will be joining the court in August, ruled in favor of Kaul in 2022, saying the law was unconstitutional. A state appeals court overturned her ruling December, saying there was no separation of powers violation because both the executive and legislative branches of government share the powers in question.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday said the Legislature cannot “assume for itself the power to execute a law it wrote.”
There is no constitutional justification for requiring the Legislature’s budget committee to sign off on court settlements at issue in the case, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote for the court.
Kaul praised the ruling, saying in a statement that the decision “finally puts an end to the legislature’s unconstitutional involvement in the resolution of key categories of cases.”
Republican legislative leaders who defended the law had no immediate comment Tuesday.
The win for Kaul comes as Evers has been unsuccessful in overturning numerous law changes affecting the power of the governor. He’s proposed undoing the laws in all four state budgets he’s proposed, and courts have upheld the laws when challenged.
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.
Login
