The hotel ballroom in downtown Madison was packed with cheering supporters as Chris Taylor gave her victory speech Tuesday night after her huge, 20-point win over her conservative opponent Maria Lazar, cementing a 5-2 liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The four other liberal women on the Court high-fived Taylor as she took the stage. The deliriously joyful crowd repeatedly interrupted Taylor’s remarks with shouting and applause, including to chant the name of her dog when she mentioned it during a lengthy list of thank-yous: “Ollie! Ollie!” 

Democrats are so hungry for success they are ready to throw their arms around any champion, including canines — yellow, blue, whatever. 

Eager to catch that wave of enthusiasm, many of the seven gubernatorial hopefuls in the Democratic primary field hovered around the ballroom. After the results were tabulated, party operatives began circulating statistics showing Taylor’s big margins of victory in Republican-leaning counties, using those results to forecast a crushing blue wave in November. Democratic Party Chair Devin Remiker called Taylor’s win “an indictment of Trump and Tom Tiffany,” the GOP candidate for governor.

Without question, Taylor’s 60-40 percentage point drubbing of Lazar is good news for Democrats, who poured money and organizing energy into the nominally nonpartisan race. And it’s a serious loss for Republicans, who backed Lazar, an anti-abortion election skeptic. But Taylor’s lopsided victory does not mean that Wisconsin has turned, overnight, from a 50-50 purple state that narrowly elected both Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump into a liberal stronghold where Democrats can expect to run the table in November. 

The reality is that Republicans gave up. After repeated, double-digit losses in the last three Supreme Court elections in a row, including the 2025 record-breaking $100 million race — when Elon Musk proved that all the money in the world and even outright bribery couldn’t convince Wisconsin voters to embrace the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel — they threw in the towel. This year, the state Republican party gave $64,000 to Lazar, compared to the $775,000 the Democratic party gave to Taylor. Republican donors also held onto their wallets. Final fundraising reports ahead of the election showed Taylor had raised more than $2 million while Lazar reported about $472,000. 

The Wisconsin GOP has concluded that spring judicial elections are a lousy bet, especially in the Trump era. Democratic voters are energized for these races, while Republican voters, especially the MAGA base, turn out in low numbers. The voters who care about April judicial races are disproportionately college educated liberals, as political analyst Craig Gilbert explains. 

All of these are reasons to take Democratic optimism pegged to Tuesday’s results with a grain of salt. After all, liberal Justices Jill Karofsky and Janet Protasiewicz posted big wins in the Wisconsin Supreme Court elections of 2020 and 2023, followed by Trump’s 2024 Wisconsin victory. 

Still, Taylor’s 20-point triumph matters. For one thing, the failure of the Republicans to put up much of a fight for Lazar comes at the same time that the GOP leaders of both chambers of the Legislature have announced they are calling it quits, along with several key members of those bodies who would face tough reelection battles now that the state’s voting maps are no longer rigged in their favor. The whole Wisconsin Republican Party seems to be in retreat. 

The only thing that got legislative Republicans off the couch recently was the UW Regents’ decision to fire their ally, University of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman. They are so outraged they’re planning to hold long-delayed confirmation hearings this week just to fire the regents. Nothing motivates Wisconsin Republicans like spite, and the defense of their own diminishing power. 

After steadfastly refusing to confirm most of Gov. Tony Evers’ appointees during his entire two terms in office, they are coming back into special session, not to strike a deal to fund schools or lower property taxes or address any of the other issues that matter to voters they didn’t get around to by the end of the session, but to take revenge on the regents and showcase their own pettiness. It’s their last power grab before they lose their gerrymandered power altogether. The regents were apparently willing to take the risk to get rid of Rothman, who is no longer needed to make nice with a soon-to-depart Republican majority.

Taylor’s huge win on Tuesday bolsters the growing sense among Wisconsinites that the Republicans are about to lose more than one judicial race. By not fighting harder, the Republicans showed their own lack of confidence. And who can blame them? As Taylor’s victory party kicked off, the news was all about whether Trump would make good on his pledge to annihilate an entire civilization in Iran — a threat so unhinged even Sen. Ron Johnson felt compelled to renounce it. 

Trump’s approval numbers are in the toilet. He is, as investigative reporter Ken Kippenstein points out on Substack, the first president in U.S. history to get no public approval bump at all for going to war. Members of Congress and even some former Trump supporters are openly discussing the need to invoke the 25th Amendment to put the Republican Party’s national leader in a straitjacket.

Add to that the cost of gas, groceries, and the deliberate destruction of affordable health care and you have a recipe for a massive midterm rebellion. The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is part of that picture, even if it’s a lopsided measure of Democratic energy and Republican depression.

Plus, the new, now locked-in majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will be a bulwark against GOP efforts to limit voting rights and interfere with fair elections.

All in all, it’s pretty terrible news for Republicans. That barking dog that’s chasing them might have a nasty bite.

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Chris Taylor, an appeals court judge and former Democratic lawmaker, was elected to an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday, securing a 5-2 majority for the Court’s liberal wing and ensuring that control remains intact until at least 2030. 

With nearly 80% of the vote counted shortly before 10 p.m., Taylor had a massive 20 point lead over Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, marking a four-election winning streak for the liberal candidates running for Wisconsin’s highest court. It also gives an early signal on the mood of the state’s voters ahead of this year’s midterm elections, when the governor’s office, majority control of the Legislature and a few competitive congressional seats will be up for grabs. 

With ideological control of the body not at stake, the 2026 Supreme Court race was markedly lower energy this year. After the more than $100 million spent on last year’s race set national fundraising records for a judicial campaign, Taylor was able to win the race with $8 million in spending from her campaign and outside advocacy groups. 

Turnout on Tuesday fell far short of the mark set last year, when the election’s stakes, its spot on the calendar shortly after President Donald Trump’s inauguration and Elon Musk’s effort to sway the race with millions of dollars of spending supercharged turnout among the state’s liberals. 

Throughout the race, Crawford polled several points ahead of Lazar; however, a large portion of the electorate, about 50%, continued to tell pollsters they remained undecided. 

At an election night watch party at Madison’s Concourse Hotel, Taylor was surrounded by her family and introduced by Chief Justice Jill Karofsky. 

In her victory speech, Taylor said she would help “move Wisconsin forward.” 

“We live in an incredible state, and people are hungry for a government that works for them,” she said. “People are hungry for a judiciary that prioritizes them, that protects our rights, that affords all Wisconsinites equal justice under the law. That is exactly what I will do as your next state Supreme Court justice.”

Throughout the campaign, Taylor sought to define herself as a careful judge who despite her history as policy director of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and a Democratic state lawmaker would act as an independent voice on the bench. She often sought to position herself as a potential bulwark on the Court against efforts from Republicans and President Donald Trump to interfere with Wisconsin’s election system during the 2028 presidential race. 

Taylor will now join Justices Jill Karofsky and Susan Crawford to be the third former Dane County Circuit Court judge to sit on the state Supreme Court. Under its current liberal majority, the Court overturned Wisconsin’s 1849 criminal abortion ban and declared the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps unconstitutional. 

At the watch party, Ana Wilson, an early education major at Mount Mary University, told the Wisconsin Examiner she believed Taylor was going to care for Wisconsin people from the bench.

“As much as there’s chaos with the Trump administration, I want what’s best for Wisconsinites,” Wilson said. “Health care, abortion access, human rights that people deserve. I’ll take these small wins at the state level.” 

Lazar’s campaign, while endorsed by the state Republican Party, received less financial support from the state GOP and its allied donors than recent conservative candidates for the Court — Dan Kelly and Brad Schimel — had received; both lost by double digits. But Lazar’s campaign message that she was the true independent in the race while her opponent would act as a partisan on the bench was similar to the conservative message in 2025 and 2023. 

Taylor’s win also continues the success that Democratic and liberal candidates have had in off-cycle and non-presidential elections in recent years — particularly since Trump took office last year. 

After the race was called, Democrats said the win represented the first steps in the effort to win up and down the ballot in November. 

“The victory Wisconsinites delivered tonight is an indictment of Trump and Tom Tiffany, who are using the federal government to bully and intimidate people into submission,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Devin Remiker said in a statement. “Our state Supreme Court has repeatedly shown it is the last line of defense against the federal government’s unconstitutional overreach, and with tonight’s election, we have secured a pro-freedom, pro-democracy majority on the Court through 2030. This victory is only the beginning of the fight ahead to win a Democratic trifecta in November and deliver real, lasting change for the working people of Wisconsin.”

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Wisconsin’s non-partisan spring elections are Tuesday. The race for an open seat on the state Supreme Court between Court of Appeals Judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor is at the top of the ticket, but Wisconsin voters will also decide a handful of races for circuit court seats, hundreds of school board races, school referendum questions and other local contests. 

Polls open on Tuesday at 7 a.m. and remain open until 8 p.m. Voters who are still in line when polls close should remain in line and will still be able to cast their ballots. Absententee ballots that have not yet been returned need to be received by local election officials by the time polls close. It’s too late to drop a ballot in the mail, but voters can bring their absentee ballots to their designated polling place, their municipal clerk’s office or, in communities that use them, to a municipal absentee ballot drop box. Details on how and where to vote as well as same-day voter registration at the polls can be found at MyVote.WI.gov.

As of Monday, 424,651 absentee ballots had been requested and 324,396 ballots had been returned, according to Wisconsin Elections Commission data. The absentee numbers show a steep drop from last year’s spring election when the state Supreme Court race drew massive national attention with the ideological balance of the Court at stake. Last year, 750,240 absentee ballots were requested and 693,981 were returned. 

Wisconsin voters head to the polls amid a flurry of national headlines about efforts from President Donald Trump and Republicans to change the rules around voter registration and absentee ballot eligibility. 

Trump signed an executive order last week that seeks to severely limit access to voting by mail. He is also pushing  for congressional Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, a bill that would change the rules guiding how people register to vote in an effort to make it harder for non-citizens to vote. Non-citizen voting has become a major focus for Republican election skeptics, however there is no evidence non-citizen voting happens in statistically significant numbers. 

Trump’s executive order curtailing mail-in ballots is being challenged in court and the SAVE Act has not yet been signed into law. At an online news conference Monday, WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe said there have been zero changes to federal law that will affect Wisconsinites trying to cast a ballot Tuesday. 

“As it pertains to the April 7, 2026 election, there are no changes,” she said. “Any federal bills that are being proposed or other measures that might be proposed at the federal level — none of those are in place. And so when voters head to the polls on April 7, they should know that nothing has changed. The same processes that you’ve used to vote in the last number of years are still in place. There have been no changes. So the photo ID requirements remain unchanged. The process where you state your name and address and you show your ID and you’re given a ballot at the polls and you sign the poll book, all of those things are still in place.” 

On Monday, the Republican Party of Wisconsin announced it had filed a complaint with WEC against the city of Green Bay after 152 people were mistakenly sent two absentee ballots. Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffries said a “system glitch” caused the error. 

Since 2020, the Wisconsin Republican Party has regularly encouraged conspiracy theories about the state’s election systems. In a statement, party chair Brian Schimming called for WEC to investigate and make sure people aren’t able to cast two votes.

“Wisconsin law is clear: one voter, one ballot,” said Schimming, who was involved in the effort to cast false Electoral College ballots on behalf of Trump after the 2020 election. “This reckless failure by the Green Bay Clerk has created serious risks of double voting and fraud. The Elections Commission must immediately investigate and order a concrete plan to secure Tuesday’s election.”

Wolfe said at the news conference that state law prevents her from commenting on the specifics of any complaints made to WEC, but that Wisconsin’s system has a “very, very established process” for how clerks handle duplicate ballots. 

The system for logging returned ballots would never allow the same voter to return two ballots, Wolfe said. 

“If two ballots come back, one of them is rejected, because only one ballot can be checked in and actually sent to be tabulated per voter,” she said. “And all that’s going to happen as part of a public process. So the actual rejection and then sending one of the ballots tabulated, all that’s going to occur at the polling place or where ballots are tabulated in that jurisdiction, and observers and the public will be made aware of exactly what’s happening and why one ballot’s being rejected and one’s being sent on to be counted. And so we always, in this situation, encourage our clerks to be very transparent in exactly how these are handled and the many, many safeguards that are in place to ensure that only one ballot can be counted.”

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Wisconsin voters Tuesday elected Madison-based Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor to a seat on the state Supreme Court, a decision that expands the high court’s liberal majority to five justices and cements liberal control until at least 2030.

Taylor, a former Democratic state lawmaker and former policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, defeated conservative Waukesha-based Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar in the race to replace outgoing Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of the court’s conservative wing. Wisconsin Supreme Court justices are elected to 10-year terms. 

“Tonight, the people of Wisconsin stood up for our rights and freedoms, our democracy, our elections and a strong state Supreme Court that will protect the independence of our beloved state,” Taylor told a packed room of supporters at the Madison Concourse Hotel. “Once again, Wisconsin showed the entire nation that we believe that the people should be at the center of government and the priority of our judiciary.”

The Associated Press called the election only 36 minutes after polls closed as early returns showed Taylor dominating the liberal bastions of Dane and Milwaukee counties, while leading or running close behind Lazar in rural counties. Taylor told supporters that Lazar called her to concede the race. 

The state’s court races are technically nonpartisan contests, but like recent high court elections, public support for Taylor and Lazar broke along party lines with Taylor backed by Democrats and Lazar by Republicans. 

Taylor’s victory further cements liberal control of the state’s judicial branch, even as a new governor enters the executive branch and Democrats and Republicans fight for control of the state Legislature later this year. Lazar had raised concerns that a five-member liberal bloc could prevent certain cases from reaching the bench because three votes are needed to take up an appeal. 

Since Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s 2023 election win that secured a liberal majority for the first time in years, the high court has been a factor in disagreements over the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches and has made major decisions on politically charged cases, such as the 2025 ruling that invalidated Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban. 

The 5-2 liberal court is likely to continue to play a major role in such cases, including challenges to the limits on collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions under Act 10 redistricting of Wisconsin’s congressional maps. Conservative Justice Annette Ziegler already announced she won’t seek reelection next year, creating another open seat that could further entrench a liberal majority.

Liberals have now won five of the last six Supreme Court elections going back to 2018. UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden called the election results “a remarkable turning of tides” from a decade ago when conservatives controlled the court and Ziegler didn’t have an opponent in 2017.

“Republicans have had a difficult run in Wisconsin during the Trump years,” Burden said. “With the court now out of reach, there will be tremendous pressure on the party this fall to take back the governorship and hold the state Legislature. The GOP is facing serious headwinds in a midterm year that will favor the Democrats nationally.”

A sleepier high court election

Without a court majority on the line, the 2026 race was a low-key departure from the state’s last two record-breaking Wisconsin Supreme Court elections. Taylor’s campaign and allies kept a significant fundraising and spending advantage over Lazar. 

Despite a sleepier race, politics remained a part of the 2026 election. In addition to political party support for each of the candidates, Taylor and Lazar represented starkly different judicial philosophies and career paths to the bench. 

Taylor centered her campaign on protecting rights and freedoms. In campaign stops across the state, she warned of future threats to Wisconsin’s elections and highlighted her advocacy work in the state Assembly and for Planned Parenthood to support reproductive health care and victims of domestic violence. 

Lazar’s campaign frequently zeroed in on Taylor’s legislative career and painted her as an activist and a politician rather than a judge. Lazar, who said the 2025 court race went “overboard” on politics, also sought to refocus Wisconsin’s Supreme Court elections on judicial experience instead of political issues. 

“I have led the type of campaign that I always said I would,” Lazar told her supporters Tuesday night in Pewaukee. “I have been honest. I’ve been transparent. I have been above board. I have led with integrity, and I want you to know that that is how we need to run races in the state of Wisconsin.”

Chris Taylor wins Wisconsin Supreme Court election, expanding liberal majority 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.

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Hey, Wisconsin. There’s an election on Tuesday.

If that comes as news, it could be because the top race is a relatively low-key Wisconsin Supreme Court contest between Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar, backed by Republicans, and Chris Taylor, backed by Democrats. They are running for an officially nonpartisan open seat on the court after conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley chose not to run for another term. 

While the state Supreme Court race will appear at the top of the ballot, there are other local municipal and judicial elections and school referendum questions for voters to decide.

As of Monday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported 317,000 people voted early in-person or by mail. In 2025, more than 693,000 people voted early ahead of the spring election.  

The polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Tuesday. You can find out what’s on your ballot, the location of your polling place and more at myvote.wi.gov. Voters can register at the polls on Election Day. 

Wisconsin Supreme Court 

The 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court election is a quieter race with fewer fireworks and significantly less overall spending than the two recent contests in 2023 and 2025, which the liberal candidate won by 10 points. 

The sleepier race is likely due to there being no majority on the line in 2026. A Lazar victory would maintain 4-3 liberal control. A Taylor win would grow the liberal majority to five out of the seven seats on the court and guarantee liberal control through at least 2030. 

Lazar and Taylor represent contrasting judicial philosophies on political issues that come before the court, including reproductive health care, redistricting, criminal justice and the power balance between government and business. 

The candidates have taken starkly different paths to the bench. Lazar served as an assistant attorney general under former Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen after starting her career in private practice. She was elected to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015 and 2021 and then to the Court of Appeals in 2022. 

Taylor also began her career in private practice but then worked as the policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. She won a special election in 2011 as a Democrat to represent a Madison-focused district in the Assembly. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Taylor to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020, and she ran unopposed in 2023 for her seat on the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals. 

Taylor has maintained a significant fundraising and spending advantage over Lazar throughout the campaign. The Marquette University Law School Poll in the weeks leading up to Election Day found a large percentage of undecided voters. 

In the last poll conducted before the April 7 election, 30% of likely voters said they supported Taylor, 22% favored Lazar and 46% said they were undecided.

School district referendums

Seventy-two Wisconsin school districts are asking voters in their communities to approve tax increases totaling $1 billion to borrow money for construction projects or to pay for operations, such as educational programs, technology or transportation services. 

The districts are turning to voters at a challenging time for referendum approvals. Referendum approval rates have declined since 2018, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

Sixty-two of the school districts are seeking operating referendums. The remaining districts are asking for capital referendums, or approval of construction projects. Two districts, Howard-Suamico and Sauk Prairie, are asking for both operating and construction referendums. 

Appeals and circuit court races

There are appeals court and circuit court races on the ballot in multiple counties across the state, but most of these are uncontested elections. Candidates elected to county circuit courts and the Court of Appeals are elected to six-year terms.

The appeals court races in the Milwaukee-based 1st District, the Waukesha-based 2nd District and Madison-based 4th District are uncontested. The unopposed candidates include incumbent Judge Joe Donald in the 1st District, conservative attorney Anthony LoCoco in the 2nd District and incumbent Judge Rachel Graham in the 4th District. 

Twenty-six circuit court district seats are on ballots across the state, but only six — Dane, Marathon, Washburn, Washington, Wood, and a shared seat in Florence and Forest counties — feature contested races. 

Voters in Marathon and Florence and Forest counties will select new circuit court judges after the incumbents in those seats did not seek reelection. Evers-appointed judicial incumbents are running against challengers in circuit court branch races in Dane, Washburn, Washington and Wood counties. 

Other local elections 

Voters on Tuesday can also make decisions on who represents them on school boards, as county supervisors and as city mayors and alderpersons. 

What is on the ballot in these local races will differ from community to community. To find out more about specific local races on your ballot, visit myvote.wi.gov.

Wisconsin’s spring election is today. See what’s on your ballot. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor tried to tag each other with accusations of partisanship during the sole debate in the campaign Thursday evening. 

After the initially scheduled debate last week was canceled because Taylor was hospitalized with a kidney stone — and another delay Thursday due to severe weather in the Milwaukee area — the debate, moderated by WISN’s Matt Smith and Gerron Jordan, was held at WISN’s studio in Milwaukee just five days before polls open April 7.

The candidates are vying for an open seat on the Court being vacated by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. After a string of high stakes races for the Court because the ideological swing of the body was up for grabs, this year’s race has drawn less attention and less money. This year the race will decide if the Court’s liberal wing will gain a 5-2 majority or if the split will remain 4-3. 

Through most of the campaign, Taylor has led in the polls and raised more money, however recent polling showed large swaths of the state’s voters remained undecided. 

Taylor, a judge on the state’s District IV Court of Appeals who previously worked on the Dane County Circuit Court, as a Democrat in the state Assembly and as the policy director of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, painted herself as a “scrupulous” judge who is proud of her work in the Legislature but will bring an independent judicial record to the Supreme Court. 

“I am scrupulous in applying the law, and I have a spine of steel when it comes to making sure people’s rights and freedoms are protected,” Taylor said.

Lazar, a judge on the state’s District II Court of Appeals who worked on the Waukesha County Circuit Court and as an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice under Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, touted her longer tenure as a judge and described herself as an independent jurist who has never belonged to a political party. 

“I guess when my opponent has a few more years of judicial experience, she’ll understand that being reversed is a part of being an independent judiciary,” Lazar said. 

Yet, as has been the case throughout the campaign, the candidates each tried to cast their opponent as a partisan extremist. 

Lazar repeatedly said that Taylor was answering questions as a legislator, not a judge. 

“On the one hand, you have a judge, an experienced judge who has been on the bench for more than 12 years, protecting the rights of everyone in the state,” Lazar said. “And on the other hand, you have a radical, extreme legislator who is known as the most liberal of the 99 in that Assembly, who now as a judicial activist, wants to put her views, her values and her agenda in the court above the law.” 

But Taylor pointed to cases in which Lazar sided with right-wing interest groups, endorsements from right-wing figures and her work before joining the bench to argue that Lazar is the more partisan figure. 

“She has a very specific agenda that favors big corporations and right-wing special interests,” Taylor said. 

The first clash of the night came over the state’s political maps and election law. Through much of the campaign, Taylor and her supporters have argued that if Lazar is elected she’ll be a vote on the Supreme Court in favor of potential Republican efforts to meddle with the state’s election results. 

Taylor pointed to Lazar’s previous support from election conspiracy theory figures such as Michael Gableman and her decision in Wisconsin Voter Alliance v. Secord, in which Lazar was criticized by the Supreme Court for ignoring existing precedent to rule that a group of election deniers should be given access to the confidential voting records of people with disabilities. She said that Lazar would be a “rubber stamp” for federal efforts to interfere in the state. 

In response, Lazar defended the state’s election system more forcefully than she had previously on the campaign trail. 

“I think it’s important that we tell people in the state of Wisconsin that our elections are safe, they’re fair and that their votes count, and that’s the key, important thing that we need to address in this state,” she said. 

The sharpest disagreement of the night came during a discussion of abortion. Last year, the Court struck down the state’s 1849 criminal abortion ban, which had halted abortion services in the state following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Since the state Court’s decision, a previously instituted law banning abortion after 20 weeks has been the guiding law in the state. 

Lazar said that she thought the return of abortion policy decisions to the individual states was a good thing and that she believes the 20 week line is a good compromise for the divided Wisconsin electorate. 

“I think that it falls within the parameters of where people in the state believe it should be, and if they don’t, the answer is to go to the legislature and the governor, not the courts,” she said, accusing Taylor of supporting abortions up to birth. 

Taylor said Lazar’s support of overturning Roe v. Wade ignores the women across the country who have been harmed by losing access to abortion care. 

“So it is tragic that we have someone running for the state Supreme Court that is celebrating that there are women all over this country who are victims of rape and incest … losing access,” Taylor said. “That is what the reality of overturning Roe v. Wade, that you have called very wise. It’s not been very wise for victims of rape and incest who now live in states where abortion has been outlawed. It’s not very wise for women who have lost their lives in states because they couldn’t get help when a pregnancy went wrong.”

Lazar responded by again accusing Taylor of acting as a partisan. 

“This is exactly what we’ve been doing in this campaign,” she said. “It’s the same old political playbook. If you don’t have anything truthful to say about your opponent, then just lie and mislead.”

Early voting is open until Saturday. Polls open at 7 a.m. on Election Day, April 7. Details for poll locations and hours can be found at MyVote.WI.gov.

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Endorsements from nearly 50 current and former Wisconsin judges were listed on the campaign website of conservative Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar as of April 2.

They were not added until late March.

At a debate April 2, Lazar’s opponent in the April 7 state Supreme Court election, liberal Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, said she knew of no judicial endorsements for Lazar.

Lazar said in early March: “If you look at my website, I don’t even list any of my endorsements yet; we may be posting some. I don’t think it’s necessarily important.”

Lazar’s endorsements include Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler. After this brief was initially published, Lazar’s campaign said two appellate judges have endorsed Lazar.

Taylor’s site lists endorsements from some 160 judges and former judges. They include four current justices, one former justice and 10 current appellate judges.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• JudgeMariaLazar.com: Endorsements
• Internet Archive Wayback Machine: JudgeMariaLazar.com home page
• Internet Archive Wayback Machine: JudgeMariaLazar.com endorsements page, March 31, 2026
• YouTube: Milwaukee Bar Association Maria Lazar interview
• Internet Archive Wayback Machine: ChrisForJustice.com endorsements page

Has Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar been endorsed by any Wisconsin judges? 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.

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We found no evidence that liberal Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor has supported allowing noncitizens to vote.

Taylor and conservative state Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar are running in the April 7 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

A Lazar ad claimed Taylor is “pushing for noncitizen voting.” 

Lazar’s campaign cited:

Taylor’s opposition, while a Democratic state lawmaker, to the Republican-backed 2011 state law requiring identification to vote.

Her introduction of a 2017 bill, which did not become law. It would have provided driver’s licenses to unauthorized residents, but the licenses would have been labeled: “Not valid for voting purposes.”

Taylor’s opinion, in a 2024 appeals court ruling, which said absentee ballots count even if voters’ witnesses fail to give election clerks their full address. Citizenship is required to vote in Wisconsin, but Wisconsin election officials generally do not verify citizenship when a person registers.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Maria Lazar campaign: The Warning
• Maria Lazar campaign: Email
• Urban Milwaukee: Taylor, Stakeholders Call on GOP to Fund Voter ID Information Campaign
• Wisconsin State Legislature: 2017 Assembly Bill 727
• PBS Wisconsin: Wisconsin appeals court upholds ruling on witness addresses for absentee ballots
• Wisconsin Watch: Do Wisconsin election officials verify citizenship when a person registers to vote?

Has Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Chris Taylor been ‘pushing noncitizen voting’? 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.

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A Wisconsin court has dismissed Democrats’ efforts to get the state to redraw its congressional maps.

The three-judge circuit court panel said it did not have jurisdiction to decide whether the state’s congressional districts have been gerrymandered along partisan lines, leaving the matter to the state’s Supreme Court.

“This Panel is not endorsing the current congressional map. Rather, we, as circuit court judges, do not have the authority to read into a Wisconsin Supreme Court case an analysis that it does not contain,” the judges wrote.

Wisconsin’s current district lines trace back to the 2011 congressional maps, which attorneys for the Democrats said were gerrymandered by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Republican-drawn 2021 maps, which then prompted the state Supreme Court to order new maps drawn that made the “least change” to the existing district lines from 2011.

This lawsuit was part of a wave of redistricting suits filed by Democratic-aligned groups across the country, but it’s unlikely to yield new maps before the midterm elections.

Republicans represent six of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts, though statewide partisan elections are often competitive and only won by a slim margin. Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin — a Republican and a Democrat, respectively — won their most recent elections by a percentage point or less. Evers won reelection by more than 3 percentage points in 2022.

Attorneys in the redistricting case may appeal the panel judgment to the state Supreme Court. Another redistricting lawsuit, which argues that Wisconsin’s congressional maps favor incumbents, is pending before its own three-judge circuit court panel.

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

Wisconsin court dismisses Democrats’ attempt to redraw congressional map 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.

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Chris Taylor has raised four times as much money as her opponent Maria Lazar since February, according to campaign finance reports filed this week. 

In the final reports filed before next week’s election, which cover a period from early-February to mid-March, Taylor raised $2,079,406 while Lazar raised $472,295. 

Taylor has far out-spent her opponent during that period, spending $3.8 million — largely on TV ads. Lazar spent $565,000 with all but $875 spent on digital advertising. 

The money raised still pales in comparison to the massive amounts of money involved in the previous two Wisconsin Supreme Court races when the ideological balance of the Court was at stake. Last year’s election between Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel broke national spending records for a judicial race, largely because of the arms race that was kicked off once Elon Musk — the world’s richest man, who was at the time serving a role in the administration of President Donald Trump — got involved. 

Taylor’s fundraising advantage has persisted throughout the campaign. Since she entered the race last May, she’s raised $5.6 million. Lazar, who entered the race five months later than Taylor in October, has raised about $976,000. 

While both candidates have sought during the campaign to assert that as a Supreme Court justice they won’t be beholden to partisan interests, both Taylor and Lazar’s largest contributors are the Democratic and Republican parties of Wisconsin. 

State law puts a $20,000 limit on campaign contributions from individuals to Supreme Court campaigns, yet political parties are allowed to transfer unlimited amounts to the campaigns. 

In the reporting period, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin contributed $724,000 to Taylor’s campaign while the Republican Party of Wisconsin contributed $96,000 to Lazar’s campaign.

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A three-judge panel on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Democratic voters seeking to redraw Wisconsin’s existing congressional maps. 

The lawsuit, Bothfield v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, was filed last summer arguing that the state’s congressional maps were an illegal partisan gerrymander. All but two of the state’s eight congressional districts are held by Republicans. 

The dismissal marks another failure from Democrats and their allies to redraw the state’s congressional maps, which since 2011 have favored Republican candidates. Since the maps were redrawn in 2011, they have frequently been at the center of the state’s political debate. 

In 2024, the state’s legislative maps, which had locked in GOP control of the state Legislature for nearly 15 years, were tossed out. Since then, attention has been focused on the congressional maps. 

The current congressional maps were instituted in 2022 by the state Supreme Court after the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers were unable to reach an agreement on passing new maps themselves. The Court selected congressional maps that had been proposed by Evers. However, Democrats and anti-gerrymandering advocates have complained that those maps were proposed under the Court’s “least change” mandate, which required that any proposed maps hew as closely as possible to the 2011 maps. 

The Bothfield lawsuit was filed around the same time as a separate lawsuit challenging the congressional maps on the basis that they illegally dampen the competitiveness of the state’s congressional elections. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that both lawsuits should first be considered by panels of three circuit court judges. 

The other pending lawsuit is expected to go to trial in 2027. 

While the lawsuits against the maps have worked through the legal system, open government advocates and some Democrats have continued to call for changes to Wisconsin law that would take the power of map drawing out of the hands of lawmakers and ban partisan gerrymandering. 

Earlier this month, Evers signed an executive order calling the Legislature into a special session to pass a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban gerrymandering.

After the panel’s decision, Republicans and their allies celebrated the ruling as a win for GOP chances in the state’s elections this fall. Republicans in several other states across the country have redrawn their congressional maps over the last year in an effort to protect the GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Retaliatory gerrymandering in Democratic states including California has attempted to tilt the playing field back in Democrats’ favor.

“This is a significant win for Republicans and a yet another blow to desperate Democrats who wanted to reshape the electoral landscape,” Zach Bannon, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement. “By keeping Wisconsin’s current district lines in place for 2026, Republicans are in a strong position to build on our momentum to retain and grow our House majority.”

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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 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.

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.

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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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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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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