The Wisconsin Assembly passed a bill to protect against lawsuits intended to discourage news coverage and quiet speech, as well as measures requiring schools to adopt policies on appropriate communications between staff and students and establishing a definition of antisemitism during a Tuesday floor session.

Assembly lawmakers plan to meet again on Wednesday and Thursday to vote on legislation with the intention of wrapping their work up this legislative session by the end of the week. Lawmakers did not complete votes on every bill they had scheduled before recessing for the State of the State address in the evening. 

Anti-SLAPP legislation passes

AB 701, to protect people from Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP), passed on a voice vote. It now goes to the Senate for consideration. 

Rep. Jim Piwowarczyk (R-Hubertus), who is the co-founder of the right-wing publication Wisconsin Right Now, said the bill would strengthen protections for free speech and civic participation and ensure that citizens aren’t silenced through “abusive litigation.” 

“The bill creates a clear, efficient process for courts to quickly dismiss lawsuits that target protected speech or participation in government proceedings. It requires a prompt hearing and stays constant discovery while the motion is pending. It also allows prevailing parties to recover attorney fees,” Piwowarczyk said. “These protections help prevent the chilling effect prolonged and expensive litigation can have on free expression.”

The bill is based on model legislation developed by the nonprofit Uniform Law Commission. 

“It’s a legal tactic … designed to punish someone through stressful, time consuming and expensive litigation,” Rep. Andrew Hysell (D-Sun Prairie) said about SLAPP legislation on the floor, adding that these types of lawsuits target people “simply because they choose to exercise their First Amendment rights to speak.” 

“It’s overdue that an anti-SLAPP statute be added to Wisconsin laws. We need to protect our citizens’ First Amendment rights and protect those rights from legal retribution,” Hysell said. 

School communication policies

Lawmakers concurred in SB 673 in a 92-7 vote. It would require public school districts and private schools to adopt policies related to appropriate communications between staff and students. The bill will now go to Gov. Tony Evers for consideration. 

Schools would need to adopt new policies by Sept. 1, 2026 under the bill. 

The bill is one of several that lawmakers introduced in reaction to a November report from the CapTimes that found over 200 investigations into teacher licenses due to allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming from 2018 to 2023.

Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said the bill would protect staff and students. The bill includes requirements that the policies include standards for appropriate content and appropriate methods of communication as well as training in identifying, preventing and reporting grooming and professional boundary violations.

The bill, Nedweski said, will protect students from “potentially predatory behavior with clear proactive protections, while also protecting well-intentioned employees who work every day with integrity and professionalism — protecting them from finding themselves in compromising situations where a misunderstanding or a false allegation could cause serious reputational harm.” 

The bill also requires that policies include consequences for employees or volunteers who violate the rules.

Private schools were included through an amendment to the bill. 

“As a parent of two public school kids, we should be doing whatever we can to make sure that our kids are safe in schools,” Rep. Mike Bare (D-Verona). said. “One of the most troubling things we heard in the series of legislative hearings on this topic is that kids who were in private schools are less safe than those who are in public schools. That’s because educators in private schools are not required to be licensed.” 

Antisemitism definition

AB 446 passed 66-33 with 11 Democrats joining Republicans in favor. The controversial bill would codify the definition for antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016. It states that antisemitism is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The bill would require local and state governmental agencies to consider the IHRA definition and its examples when investigating allegations of racial, religious or ethnic discrimination.

Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde (D-Milwaukee) said he was concerned that the bill would infringe on people’s First Amendment rights. 

“Many Jewish and Muslim work groups have come together to use this definition to establish a framework to help understand what antisemitism is,” Moore Omokunde said. But, he added, the intention was not for the definition to be codified into law.

Moore Omokunde said he is worried that the bill could be used to punish people for speaking out against  the actions of the Israeli government.

Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison), who is Jewish, said she was frustrated with the opposition to the bill. 

“Antisemitism is real. We hear again and again, particularly since October 7th, that when acts of antisemitism occur, they’re not really antisemitic,” Subeck said. “I don’t spend a lot of time when somebody tells me about an act of homophobia, I don’t debate whether it was really homophobic. When somebody who has been a victim of bias, discrimination and worse, tells me what happens to them, I believe it.”

Subeck said the bill is the Legislature’s opportunity to take a “firm stand” against antisemitism.

The bill is now in the Senate.

The Assembly also passed a bill that would prohibit people from serving as a state Supreme Court justice or as a judge of a court of record after the age of 75; AB 640 passed on a 54-45 vote along party lines. 

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The Wisconsin Assembly will vote Tuesday on a bill that would define antisemitism and that has prompted deep divisions — including among Jewish leaders, who are found among both the supporters and opponents of the measure.

Proponents of the legislation contend it is needed to take a stand against a surge in antisemitic actions, on college campuses as well as in other contexts.

Critics, however, argue that the bill would criminalize political speech critical of Israeli actions, most recently in the ongoing conflict in Gaza — which has also divided the Jewish community.

The bill would codify in Wisconsin law a definition of antisemitism that was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016.

The definition states: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The IHRA has also published a list of bullet points as “contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere…”

The legislation, AB 446, requires local and state governmental agencies to consider the IHRA definition “including its examples” when investigating allegations of racial, religious or ethnic discrimination. Its Senate companion is SB 445.

The definition would also be used to determine “enhanced criminal penalties for criminal offenses” if a defendant is found to target a victim “because of the victim’s or group of victims’ actual or perceived race, religion, color, or national origin.”

The bill “doesn’t create any new criminal penalty or compel any legal proceeding to be initiated,” testified its Assembly author, Rep. Ron Tusler (R-Harrison), at public hearings on the measure. “Rather, it provides a standard to be used in evaluating whether an alleged criminal act as provided for under current law was motivated by antisemitism.”

Both the IHRA’s examples and the bill’s criminal penalty language have become key points of criticism for the legislation’s opponents, however. Rabbis have testified both in favor of the legislation and against it.

“Nothing about this bill would prevent me, or anyone else, from rebuking Israel for its actions when conscience demands it,” said Rabbi Noah Chertkoff, who serves a congregation in the Milwaukee suburb of Fox Point, testifying in support of the bill at its Jan. 28 state Senate hearing.

At the same hearing, Rabbi Dena Feingold, the retired leader of a Kenosha congregation, called the IHRA definition “highly controversial and problematic in a number of respects” in her opposition testimony.

“It is far from universally accepted within the Jewish community, and many scholars and leaders have outright rejected it,” Feingold said.

The number of examples offered by the IHRA treating “anti-Israel rhetoric as antisemitism gives the impression that anti-Israel critics and protesters are by far the most likely sources of antisemitism in America,” Feingold added. “On the contrary, I believe that racists and white nationalists are the largest sources of antisemitism in this country.”

The legislation’s sponsor list is heavily Republican. A handful of Democrats in both chambers have signed on, but some have subsequently withdrawn their support.

At both the Assembly public hearing in October and the state Senate hearing in January, witnesses supporting the bill described increased antisemitic violence and actions, particularly since the massacre of more than 1,200 people in an attack on a music festival in Israel by the Palestinian political and military group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

Ari Friedman, executive director of the Jewish Security Network, said at the January hearing that an audit by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council found a 192% increase in antisemitic incidents in Wisconsin and similarly a national escalation in anti-Jewish hate crimes, according to the FBI.

The legislation “is not about suppressing free speech or political disagreement. Those rights are fundamental,” Friedman said. “But when expression crosses into harassment, intimidation and threats of violence directed at people because they are Jewish, it ceases to be abstract debate and becomes a public safety issue.”

The IHRA’s definition of antisemitism “explicitly does not criminalize speech,” testified the Jewish Community Relations Council’s chair, Jill Plavnick. “It provides clarity; helping schools, workplaces and courts recognize when hate crosses the line into discrimination.”

But Hannah Rosenthal, a former CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation who served as a special envoy on global antisemitism during the Obama administration and also led the national Jewish Council for Public Affairs, testified in opposition to the bill in January, describing it as part of a Trump administration push to target critics of the administration’s Middle East policy.

She said the White House appears intent on using the IHRA definition of antisemitism “to identify individuals or organizations that disagree with the administration’s goal to fight any pro-Palestinian efforts as part of a Hamas network, and therefore antisemitic or even a terrorist.”

The IHRA definition “does include some very important examples of antisemitism,” Rosenthal testified. “But it is silent on conspiracy theories, the great replacement theory, white nationalism, Christian nationalism, deicide, blaming Jews for funding opposition efforts, and the like.”

(The “great replacement theory” is a conspiracy theory that “Jews and some Western elites are conspiring to replace white Americans and Europeans with people of non-European descent,” explained Rodney Coates, a Miami University professor, in a 2024 article for The Conversation.)

Advocates have pointed to language stating that the bill may not be construed to infringe on constitutional rights under the First Amendment or to conflict with federal or state antidiscrimination laws.

“It affirms that nothing in this bill may be used to infringe on free expression,” Chertkoff testified.

But Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, said that the bill incorporates the IHRA definition and its examples into Wisconsin’s antidiscrimination law — making what she called the “First Amendment savings clause” meaningless.

“Although the ACLU of Wisconsin appreciates the sentiment expressed by this provision, it cannot override the bill’s plain terms,” Merkwae said.

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