The Wisconsin Supreme Court voted Thursday to create a committee that will study and assess the state’s recusal rules for judges and justices — delaying immediate action on an issue that has gained public prominence as the cost of the state’s Supreme Court elections has risen. 

The Court voted after holding a public hearing and open conference on a petition from a group of retired judges to update the state’s recusal rules, which currently put the decision of recusal in the hands of each individual judge or justice.  

The existing rules were adopted in 2010 and largely written by two powerful lobbying groups, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association. In 2017, the Court’s then-conservative majority voted 5-2 to reject a petition to enact stricter recusal rules. 

In recent years, as the Court’s liberals worked year by year to gain a majority, the conservative justices and many Republican officials in the state have complained that they were in league with the state Democratic party and called for the recusal of justices on high profile issues. Those accusations continued Thursday. 

“I oppose the creation of this committee, because I think it will ultimately waste the time of all of the members,” Justice Rebecca Bradley said. “Because if the committee proposes anything that represents true reform in the recusal arena, the court, as currently constituted, will never adopt anything that will interfere with the successful formula for electoral success in recent elections, which is to telegraph how you will rule on cases and receive up to $10 million from a party, and then sit on that party’s cases. So I ultimately think it’s going to waste a lot of people’s time.”

During the public hearing, the petition authors were among the speakers pushing for a committee to study the issue rather than adopt the suggested new rules because of the complexity involved. Speakers questioned how recusal rules might conflict with the First Amendment, whether they would adhere to existing state law, the state of Wisconsin’s legal culture and Supreme Court campaigns were questioned. 

“We want to have the correct rule, the best rule,” said retired Dane County Judge Richard Niess, one of the petitioners. “There is no one single rule that is demanded by the circumstances. There are a number of options, but they all need to be vetted within the context of Wisconsin and within the context of the constitutions, both state and federal.” 

Throughout the day, Justice Brian Hagedorn was especially vocal, pushing speakers to say what they hoped to accomplish with a new rule. He noted that every member of the Supreme Court has decided cases in which one of the parties spent money campaigning for or against them. 

“A lot of this feels like PR cover to me that doesn’t really do anything, and so I’m trying to figure out what problem you’re trying to solve,” Hagedorn said. “Who should have recused that’s not recusing, that you think this rule is meant to resolve. Like your petition is described as something ‘toughening recusal.’” 

He added that it “goes both ways. From my perspective, I don’t know whether it matters whether somebody campaigned for or against somebody, so for example, SEIU [the Service Employees International Union], they spent, according to public records, under $40,000 campaigning against me. I sat on the case. They gave $400,000 plus to the Chief Justice [Jill Karofsky]. She sat on the case. Is that problematic? None of us, neither of us seem to think it was under those circumstances.” 

The justices also debated how modern campaigns have affected the issue of recusal — with political parties and their allies spending millions of dollars to elect their preferred candidate while the candidates themselves more directly reference their personal views  on important issues. 

“There’s this question about what kind of legal culture we want in the state of Wisconsin,” Hagedorn said. “What kind of judicial elections we want in the state of Wisconsin. When I travel around the country, frankly, judges of all stripes kind of aghast at what has become of Wisconsin’s elections. We’re kind of considered a bit of a national disgrace about how elections are run nowadays, and part of that’s the resources that flow into these races. Part of it’s the nature of how campaigns have played out, because they’re no longer about often the legal questions.” 

Karofsky said that those frustrations about Wisconsin’s system also go the other way, noting that observers are just as annoyed by nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court telling senators they’ll just “call balls and strikes” when clearly they will bring a political frame to the Court. 

“The utter frustration of members of the Senate, members of the public, members of the legal community who know that’s probably — and as it turns out, in many cases — just not the truth, and that there’s this veneer that they hide behind and say that they are just going to be fair and impartial,” she said. 

During the hearing, Ann Jacobs, a former president of the Wisconsin Association of Justice and chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that whatever the rule is, the Court needs to be careful that it doesn’t punish attorneys for being politically involved. 

“It appears that in considering recusal, a judge has to consider a lawyer’s or a litigant’s prior political activities, and what does that mean? Door knocking, signature gathering, fundraiser holding, social media posts, hours spent on behalf of a campaign, meetings attended,” she said, referring to the draft rule written by the petitioners. 

“How does a judge ascertain this?” she asked. “Does a lawyer have to divulge this as a matter of course, does the judge have to question lawyers about their political activities? Is a judge required to search the internet looking for political activity?”

Jacobs warned against the prospect of “a system where parties, litigants, their lawyers, etc. are cross examined” about their political activity and possibly excessive partisanship.

She said she has a “selfish interest in this” because she’s a co-chair of a Democratic party caucus, a partisan appointee to a state commission and sits on the board of a political organization.  

“I’m sort of the definition of politically active, and what I can’t tell from this proposed rule is whether and when and how my political activity that I am proud of, within the party of my choosing could cause the recusal of a judge,” she said. “We must be extraordinarily careful not to penalize lawyers and litigants for being politically active. That’s the heart of our democracy. It’s what we want people to do.”

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to hear from members of the public this week on a request to require judges to recuse themselves if past donations to or support of their judicial campaign could affect their impartiality in a case.

But it appears unlikely changes to the court’s recusal rules will happen right away. 

In letters to the court over the last month, some legal organizations and research groups have argued that the justices should reject the proposal, including the five retired circuit court judges from Dane, Milwaukee and Monroe counties who proposed the changes in the first place. 

Instead, the former judges, representatives of Law Forward, the Wisconsin Association for Justice and directors of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggest the Wisconsin Supreme Court should establish an advisory committee to study what process would work best in Wisconsin. 

The groups said the proposed rule changes before the court on Thursday stem from valid concerns about an impartial judiciary, but could have unintended consequences, such as chilling speech of attorneys who want to participate in elections. 

“Having solid judicial recusal standards is very important, and so it seems that the best way to move forward is to pull together a variety of different perspectives to come up with the best solution,” said Rachel Snyder, policy counsel for Law Forward. “More brain power and more thoughtful consideration … could produce a better workable recusal standard that meets the goals of ensuring confidence in the judiciary and ensuring that conflicts are addressed when they need to be, without going too far in the other direction, and chilling speech that we wouldn’t want chilled or opening the door to recusal being something that can then be weaponized.” 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected to hold an open conference following the public comment period Thursday morning at the Capitol in Madison to decide next steps, a spokesperson said. The high court could vote on the proposal, decide to form an advisory committee or make other related decisions, the spokesperson said. 

Opting for further study would keep the current rules in place ahead of the next state Supreme Court election in 2027. Two candidates already launched campaigns for the April election after Justice Annette Ziegler in March said she would not seek another term on the bench. 

Snyder said it’s understandable some people want changes sooner rather than later, but expediency should not supersede reaching the best policy. In the meantime, judges can still voluntarily recuse themselves, she said. 

“If we’re going to do it, we should try to get it right to the best of our ability,” Snyder said. 

Former Dane County Judge Richard Niess, one of the retired judges who petitioned for the change, said the group had not considered a study committee as a possibility, but thought it was a “terrific” suggestion. To balance concerns about timing for a study, Niess said his colleagues asked the justices to put a deadline on when an advisory committee would share any recommendations. 

“We were delighted to receive the responses that we did, all of them, because it was precisely the type of discussion that we want to have, and we want to have it in public, so that whatever is decided upon by the Supreme Court, the public will know what the reasoning is,” Niess said. 

Current rules written by business lobby

The debate is part of a decades-long battle over what to do about increasing spending in Wisconsin’s nonpartisan, but increasingly political state Supreme Court races. 

“Broadly the question of recusal is important because it gets to the sort of core feature of our judiciary, which is the right to a fair and impartial tribunal,” said Derek Clinger, senior counsel and director of partnerships for the State Democracy Research Initiative, who has studied judicial recusals in and outside of Wisconsin. “That kind of independence and fairness is what gives the courts legitimacy, and so just the fact that the court is considering this shows that they’re taking this issue quite seriously.” 

It’s also significant that the court is debating recusal rules given the history of the issue in Wisconsin over the last 15 years, Clinger said. 

The rules were crafted after record spending in the 2007 and 2008 Wisconsin Supreme Court elections led to conservative control of the court. State Supreme Court election spending has exploded since then as liberals gained control. The 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race drew $144.5 million in spending, topping Wisconsin’s 2023 race as the most expensive high court election in U.S. history. 

The former conservative-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2010 adopted the existing rules drafted by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association. The rules state judges do not have to recuse from a case because a party or an attorney donated to their political campaigns. WMC did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about whether the rules should change.  

The conservative-majority court in 2017 also rejected a petition from 54 retired judges who sought tighter recusal rules. 

Nearly a decade later, the five former circuit court judges submitted their petition in January and were granted a hearing in early April. In a memo tied to their petition, the former judges noted that since the 2010 rules were adopted, “the amount of money contributed to Supreme Court elections, and even to some of the state circuit court elections, has exploded.” 

“It is not a stretch to conclude some cause and effect relationship,” they wrote.

Niess said he recalled ongoing debates around recusals with Chief Justice Jill Karofsky and Justice Susan Crawford while they were all on the Dane County Circuit Court. 

“We were just kind of shaking our heads about how did we get to this point,” Niess recalled. “And since … these two individuals have joined as justices, it seemed the perfect time for us to just serve up a petition to get a discussion going.” 

At a WisPolitics event in October, Karofsky committed to holding a public hearing about establishing a recusal rule for the court. 

“We need to bring people into the Supreme Court hearing room and we need to hear about what kind of rule and what kind of parameters on a rule people think that we should have,” Karofsky said at the time.

Wisconsin Supreme Court revisits recusal rules amid debate over money and impartiality 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.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the state’s congressional maps on the grounds that they’re an anti-competitive gerrymander, the Court ruled Friday afternoon. 

In an order that again showed the Court’s partisan divide spilling out into the public, the Court’s four liberals voted to accept the case while Justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler accused the majority of acting as tools of the Democratic party. 

The lawsuit against the maps was brought last summer by a bipartisan business group, Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy Coalition, represented by the progressive nonprofit Law Forward. Rather than challenging the state’s congressional maps on the grounds that they’re an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander — a tactic that has repeatedly failed — the lawsuit argues the maps purposefully protect incumbents from realistic challenges. 

Because of a state law passed by Republicans in 2011, the lawsuit was first heard by a panel of three circuit court judges. In a ruling late last month, the panel dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the claims were essentially the same as those made in a partisan gerrymander challenge and therefore a question for the executive and legislative branches. 

The panel’s ruling was immediately appealed to the Supreme Court because the 2011 law states that appeals of these panel rulings can’t be heard by the Court of Appeals. 

While accepting the case, the Court denied a request that it be heard on an expedited schedule. With candidates for this fall’s midterm elections required to file ballot access signatures by June 1 and ballots are set to be printed shortly after, it’s unlikely the case will be concluded in time to change the state’s maps before November. 

In response to the Court accepting the case, Bradley and Ziegler vehemently objected — arguing that accepting the case is signaling the majority’s intent to redraw the maps. 

“An astonishingly activist court will once again revisit precedent it doesn’t like in order to do the bidding of its political masters,” Bradley wrote. “The Democratic Party bought multiple seats on this court to achieve yet another outcome unobtainable democratically. Like last time, the United States Supreme Court will likely reverse the majority’s unlawful ruling and protect our Republic. No kings. No queens either.”

Bradley, who frequently cites sources from a wide range of non-legal texts, also quoted George Orwell’s “1984” in her dissent. 

Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote a concurrence to the ruling, defending the majority from the conservative justices’ criticisms and calling them “false, inappropriate, and disingenuous.” 

“Deciding to hear a case does not reflect any weighing of the merits of any party’s claims, let alone prejudgment about who will prevail and why,” Dallet wrote. “Instead, we must — as a majority of this court does — stick to our neutral role, and let the parties argue their case before we render judgment. When the time comes to issue our decision, we will follow the law wherever it leads.”

A Dane County judge ruled Friday that lawmakers could not block administrative rules that had been through the rulemaking process and received approval from Gov. Tony Evers.

Evers and the Republican-led Legislature have been fighting over administrative rulemaking abilities for years. The Wisconsin Supreme Court decided in its July 2025 Evers v. Marklein II ruling that statutes allowing a legislative committee to pause or suspend administrative rules indefinitely were unconstitutional.

Following that decision, Evers started taking steps to implement 12 administrative rules he had previously approved,  without getting sign-off from legislative committees. Republican lawmakers responded by instructing the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB) not to  publish any rule that hadn’t gone through a review by the Legislature. 

Evers sued in Sept. 2025 to block the lawmakers’ action.

Judge Nia Trammel granted Evers’ request for a declaration that LRB publish all administrative rules that have gone through the rulemaking procedures and have been approved by the governor.

In the ruling, Trammel said a rule can go into effect because there isn’t a statute prohibiting promulgation of a rule even if a standing committee has not completed a review and if one did exist it would be “facially unconstitutional.”

Trammel cited the state Supreme Court’s Marklein II decision, which found that “the ability of a ten-person committee to halt or interrupt the passage of a rule, which would ordinarily be required to be presented to the governor as a bill, is simply incompatible with Articles IV and V of the Wisconsin Constitution.”

“For the same reason, if the Court found that the standing committee had an ability to pause promulgation for up to sixty days, if not possibly months, it would also be unconstitutional,” Trammel wrote. 

Evers said in a statement that the decision is a win for Wisconsin and “our efforts to continue restoring the balance of power in Wisconsin.” 

“For far too long, the Republican Legislature had a gerrymandered majority that enabled them to undermine our constitutional separation of powers and give themselves outsized influence and power over state government,” Evers said. “A handful of lawmakers should not be able to singlehandedly bring the state to a standstill and stop good work from happening on behalf of the people of our state.”

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Three weeks after two right-wing groups demanded the repeal of a professional licensing board’s ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ clients of social workers and other therapists, Gov. Tony Evers sent a sharply worded reply.

In a Tuesday letter to the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and Wisconsin Family Action, Evers declared, “my administration has no intention of repealing Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban.”

Evers asserted that the April 14 demand letter from the two groups was based on “a significant misreading” of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that threw parts of a Colorado ban on conversion therapy into question. 

Evers wrote that it was “disappointing” that the organizations support “a long-disavowed and outdated practice” that extensive research has shown to be ineffective and responsible for harms including depression, suicide, substance misuse, posttraumatic stress and anxiety.

“On the other hand, this should come as no surprise,” Evers wrote. “After all, bullying LGBTQ kids and Wisconsinites seems to be an important goal for Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and Wisconsin Family Action.”

Purported to dissuade people from same-sex attractions and from gender dysphoria — which the American Psychiatric Association has defined as  “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity” — conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, has been widely discredited.

Conversion therapy is not limited to talk therapy. “Aversive techniques used in reparative therapies have included electric shock, physical violence, administration of emetics, and personal degradation and humiliation,” the American Academy of Nursing wrote in a 2015 statement opposing the practice.

The Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board published an updated professional code in April 2024 that declared “any intervention or method” used or promoted to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity to be “unprofessional conduct” that could subject a practitioner to professional discipline.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a March 31 ruling, sent a lawsuit challenging a Colorado law against conversion therapy back to lower federal courts. The ruling instructed the lower courts to apply “strict scrutiny” on First Amendment grounds to the Colorado law because it seeks to “regulate speech based on viewpoint.”

In their demand letter, WILL and Wisconsin Family Action called on the Evers administration to repeal the ban in the Wisconsin therapists’ code. The letter declared that it was similar to the Colorado law and claimed that “the Supreme Court held that Colorado’s substantively identical statute was unconstitutional.”

Evers wrote that the demand “relies on a significant misreading of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision” and had “erroneously” characterized its findings. 

“First, the Court intentionally — and specifically — stopped short of striking down any applications of Colorado’s law,” Evers wrote. The high court instead remanded the case to the lower court to apply a “more searching scrutiny” to the law, he added. “Repeal before that occurs would be premature.”

Evers also wrote that the ruling “expressly held that heightened scrutiny applies only to certain applications of Colorado’s law, not the entire provision. Specifically, the case concerned only Colorado’s conversion therapy prohibition as it applied to talk therapy — not to other treatment, such as physical or medication interventions.”

Quoting the Court’s ruling, Evers wrote that the Colorado plaintiff, therapist Kaley Chiles, stated that “the statute has many valid applications. Indeed, [she] did not take issue with Colorado’s effort to ban what she herself calls ‘long-abandoned, aversive’ physical interventions. Instead, Ms. Chiles objected to Colorado’s law only as it applies to her talk therapy, therapy that involves no physical interventions or medications, only the spoken word.”

Wisconsin’s professional rule also covers more than talk therapy, Evers wrote, and the therapy, counseling and social work board “will maintain the rule and continue to enforce its valid applications, in order to protect Wisconsinites from harmful and offensive practices by Board licensees.”

WILL’s initial response Thursday to a request for comment was a two-word email message from WILL Deputy Counsel Rebecca Furdek: “Lawsuit incoming.”

In a follow up statement, Furdek said that Evers was “resorting to personal, baseless attacks on WILL and its mission.” Contrary to the distinctions Evers made about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the statement reiterated WILL’s characterization that the Court found Colorado’s “substantively identical law amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”

Making no reference to other conversion therapy tactics, the statement concluded: “Government shouldn’t be deciding which viewpoints are ‘acceptable’ for Christian counselors to express when providing talk therapy to the individuals who voluntarily seek out faith-based counseling.”

In his letter, Evers wrote that because the Colorado case remains active in lower federal courts, the Department of Safety and Professional Services will attach a note to the conversion therapy rule stating that “certain instances of the unprofessional conduct” it refers to “are the subject of ongoing litigation.”

Wisconsin’s conversion therapy ban was enacted after several previous attempts were blocked by the Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules. A Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in July 2025 found that state laws the committee’s Republican majority used to review and suspend administrative rules were unconstitutional and encroached on the examining board’s legal authority.

Marc Herstand, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers Wisconsin chapter, praised Evers’ letter Thursday. The association was among the groups that urged the counseling board to add conversion therapy to practices considered unprofessional conduct. 

Wisconsin state law “clearly gives professions the authority to establish their own Conduct Code as the social work profession, along with the marriage and family therapy and professional counseling professions,  have done in classifying Conversion Therapy as unprofessional conduct,” Herstand said in an email message. 

“I applaud Governor Evers for his recognition of the severe harm that Conversion Therapy inflicts on LGBTQ children and his commitment to retain the ban on Conversion Therapy [in the professional code] to the maximum extent possible.”

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A lawsuit seeking to throw out Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they’re unconstitutionally anti-competitive was dismissed Tuesday by a panel of three circuit court judges. 

The lawsuit was brought last summer by bipartisan business group Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy Coalition, represented by the progressive nonprofit Law Forward. 

For more than a decade, Wisconsin has been a national symbol of the effects of extreme partisan gerrymandering and Tuesday’s dismissal comes amid a effort by both major parties to redraw maps ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. 

A national mid-decade redistricting tit-for-tat started last year when Texas Republicans drew new maps, at President Donald Trump’s request, in an attempt to limit the number of Democrats in the House of Representatives. A number of other Republican states, including Missouri and North Carolina, followed suit. In response, voters in California and Virginia voted to change state laws to allow Democrats to re-draw their maps to minimize Republican seats. 

This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced a bill that would redraw his state’s maps to give Republicans four more seats. 

While both parties have drawn political maps to favor their own candidates, only congressional Democrats have proposed a bill that would ban partisan gerrymandering. In Wisconsin, state Democrats have long pushed for the adoption of a non-partisan redistricting commission. 

Wisconsin’s current congressional maps were adopted in 2021 by the state Supreme Court after Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans in the Legislature were unable to reach a deal on their own. When forced to weigh in, the Supreme Court instituted a “least change” rule that required any maps proposed to the Court to hew as closely as possible to the maps instituted by Republicans in 2011. The map the Court chose was proposed by Evers, a Democrat, but resulted in a heavily Republican congressional delegation, since they were drawn to adhere to the “least change” standard.

The 2011 political maps and the least change decision allowed Republicans to hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats. The state Supreme Court tossed out the state’s legislative maps in 2023 — which remained heavily gerrymandered under the “least change” standard — on the grounds that the shapes of the districts, some of which were broken into noncontiguous parts, were illegal. 

Over the years, the court system has heard a number of challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they are an illegal partisan gerrymander. A separate three-judge panel dismissed another lawsuit on partisan gerrymandering grounds late last month. 

Despite that dismissal, the Law Forward lawsuit argued that its claims were new and therefore deserved to be considered by the courts. The lawsuit argued that the maps were drawn to unfairly give incumbents of both parties an advantage, pointing to the fact that only one of the state’s congressional districts, western Wisconsin’s 3rd CD, is regularly decided by a single-digit margin. 

“After the Wisconsin Legislature adopted the 2011 congressional map, congressional races over the ensuing decade were, as intended, highly uncompetitive,” the lawsuit stated. “The Court’s adoption … of the ‘least change’ congressional map necessarily perpetuated the essential features — and the primary flaws — of the 2011 congressional map, including the 2011 congressional map’s intentional and effective effort to suppress competition.”

Republicans and their allies intervened in the case, arguing that it should be dismissed because the anti-competitive argument treads the same ground as the partisan gerrymandering claims the Court has already declined to hear. 

The three-judge panel, made up of Dane County Judge David Conway, Marathon County Judge Michael Moran and Portage County Judge Patricia Baker, agreed and dismissed the case, noting that the makeup of the state’s political maps is a question best left to the political branches of government, not the judicial system.

“Plaintiffs’ anti-competitive gerrymandering claims are functionally equivalent to partisan gerrymandering claims, at least for purposes of the political question analysis,” the judges wrote. “In a two-party system, partisan fairness and competitiveness are correlated: a more competitive map is typically a fairer map, whereas less competition usually means less partisan fairness. The objective of both theories is to change ‘the partisan makeup of districts,’ whether by achieving proportional representation, electoral competitiveness, or both.” 

Doug Poland, Law Forward’s director of litigation, said in a statement Tuesday that it’s disappointing the panel dismissed the case before it had the opportunity to hear evidence. He also said the panel’s ruling will be appealed directly to the Supreme Court. 

“This is the first anti-competitive gerrymandering case ever filed in Wisconsin courts, and it deserves to be heard,” Poland said. “We believe that the circuit court was wrong in concluding that anti-competitive gerrymandering is ‘functionally equivalent’ to partisan gerrymandering. They are different claims, based on different evidence, that target different ways of manipulating representation to the detriment of voters.”

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Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Pedro Colón announced Tuesday he’s running to replace retiring Justice Annette Ziegler on the Wisconsin Supreme Court next year. 

Colón, a former Democratic member of the state Assembly and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge, moved to Milwaukee from Puerto Rico when he was 10 years old. He was the first Latino elected to the Wisconsin Assembly and to sit on the state’s appeals court. 

He was appointed to the Milwaukee County Court by Gov. Jim Doyle in 2010 and then reelected three times. He was appointed to the District I Court of Appeals by Gov. Tony Evers in 2023. 

Colón said in a news release that his experience moving to Wisconsin and decades in the law make him qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. 

“I came to Milwaukee at ten years old, not speaking a word of English. I know what it feels like to stand before a system that was not built for you,” Colón said. “For 15 years on the bench, I have made sure every person who walks into my courtroom gets the same thing: a listening ear and a fair shot. That is exactly what I will do on the Supreme Court.”

Colón got his undergraduate degree from Marquette University and his law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife and has two daughters. 

He is the second liberal-leaning judge to enter the race to replace the conservative former Chief Justice Ziegler, who announced her plan to retire earlier this year. Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette announced her candidacy earlier this month. 

A liberal victory in 2027 would establish a 6-1 majority on the Court, leaving Justice Brian Hagedorn, who has occasionally been a swing vote and sided with the Court’s liberals, as the lone conservative on the bench.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case brought by a conservative group that could determine whether sensitive information about people judged mentally incapable of voting is a public record. 

It’s the second time justices are hearing arguments in this case, which previously had been caught up in conflicting opinions issued by two of the state’s appeals court districts. It also became an attack point used by liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor in the most recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which she won by 20 points. Her opponent, Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, wrote an opinion supportive of the conservative group’s position, which was unusual because it contradicted another appeals court ruling in a separate case on the same issue.

The key question before justices on Tuesday is whether the information in Notices of Voting Eligibility should be publicly accessible. Courts send those forms to election officials after a judge in a guardianship case determines someone is not competent to cast a ballot. State law says “the fact that an individual has been found incompetent … is accessible to any person who demonstrates to the custodian of the records a need for that information.”. 

The Wisconsin Voter Alliance is a conservative group led by Ron Heuer, who worked on the state’s partisan review of the 2020 presidential election results conducted by former Justice Michael Gableman. The alliance filed lawsuits in 13 counties arguing that access to the information about voters who have been judged incompetent would show inconsistencies with the state’s voter rolls. Gableman’s investigation ended ignominiously, and he’s now facing a three-year suspension of his law license for his unprofessional conduct.

Heuer said he “never expected” the high court to take the case back on appeal. 

“We are well within our bounds here to have access to that data,” he said.

In 2023, a review conducted by the Dane County clerk at the request of Wisconsin Watch found 95 individuals who previously cast ballots despite a court declaring them unable to do so, though administrative error and people moving to different municipalities explained many of those cases, rather than any kind of intentional voter fraud. Election officials and state lawmakers previously identified a need for a legally binding process to track adjudicated incompetent voters, though no bill has passed to fix the holes in the system. 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission also conducted a review of adjudicated incompetent voters, which was completed in 2023, and communicated with local register in probate offices to make sure records were accurate ahead of the 2024 elections, said spokesperson Emilee Miklas. 

Miklas declined to comment on the Wisconsin Voter Alliance case, but noted the commission has previously asked for legislative changes to better track those voters. 

Republicans this session proposed a bill that would have required circuit courts to notify the Wisconsin Elections Commission by email about a determination of voter incompetency and then the commission would have had three business days to update that person’s voter status and notify a local clerk. The bill passed the Assembly in November, but died after it did not receive a hearing in the Senate. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a bill with similar language and other provisions during the 2023 legislative session because other elements in the bill could cause ballots with minor errors to be discarded. 

Disability advocates remain concerned that the details on Notices of Voting Eligibility forms, if made public, can put already vulnerable populations at risk of exploitations or scams. The forms sought by the WVA can include a person’s name, address and date of birth. 

“We already know more about them from the fact that they’ve been found incompetent than you know about the average person you pass on the street,” said Polly Shoemaker, an attorney with the Wisconsin Guardianship Support Center. “So there’s that, and then there’s the fact that it’s these folks who can be very easily taken advantage of.”

How we got here

The high court last held oral arguments in September 2024 following conflicting opinions issued in separate but similar cases in the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals and the Waukesha-based 2nd District. 

Justices in January 2025 only reached an opinion on the 2nd District’s decision, which was released after the 4th District’s ruling was published as precedent. The high court did not rule last year on whether the Notices of Voting Eligibility are accessible as public records.

The 4th District in November 2023 affirmed a Juneau County decision that the sensitive information about those voters is not open for public disclosure. A judicial committee on Dec. 21, 2023, published the 4th District’s opinion as precedent. 

Then, on Dec. 27, 2023, the 2nd District ruled that the WVA had a right to the records, overturning a Walworth County court’s decision and clashing with the precedent set in the 4th District case. Lazar and Appeals Court Judge Shelley Grogan made up the majority with liberal Judge Lisa Neubauer dissenting. 

The 2nd District revised the appeals decision in March 2025 after the state Supreme Court’s opinion, and the WVA petitioned for justices to hear the case again. 

But the 2nd District opinion, written by Lazar, became a point of attack in the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race. In the only debate ahead of the election, Taylor used the case to support her claim that Lazar “brought an extreme right-wing agenda to the bench.”

“She has refused to follow precedent,” Taylor said. “She ruled to release personal, private voting information to a right-wing group that tried to overturn our election. Thank goodness she was reversed by the state Supreme Court.”

In addition to the Wisconsin Voter Alliance case, the high court was also hearing oral arguments on Tuesday in another case on whether a child who was injured during birth has the right to pursue legal action against a doctor. 

Legal case over access to sensitive voter data returns to Wisconsin Supreme Court is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette announced Thursday she’s getting into the 2027 race for Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

Brunette previously served as the Clark County district attorney, after she was elected as a Democrat, serving in that office from 2012 to 2018. Her announcement comes just days after liberal-leaning Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor stormed to a 20 point victory over conservative Judge Maria Lazar in this year’s Supreme Court race. 

Brunette was elected to the circuit court in 2018 and ran unopposed for reelection in 2024. She said in a statement that she was running for the Supreme Court to protect Wisconsinites’ freedoms. 

“I’m running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court because it has never been more important to have state courts dedicated to protecting fundamental rights and freedoms and holding people, and the government, accountable when they break the law,” Brunette said. “Every person who enters a courtroom is seeking the same thing: fairness, justice, a system they can trust. That’s the kind of court I want to protect for every Wisconsinite, and for my own family. Whether it’s protecting personal healthcare rights, safeguarding voting rights, or supporting public safety, we need to protect a majority on our state Supreme Court who will fairly and impartially uphold our laws.”

Her message closely matches the argument Taylor worked to make on the campaign trail over the last year. 

Brunette is running for the seat currently held by conservative Justice Annette Ziegler, who has already announced she’s not running. A victory would mean that Justice Brian Hagedorn, who has occasionally sided with the Court’s liberals, is the only conservative left on the seven-member Court. 

Before being elected as the first woman to serve as Clark County district attorney, Brunette was the county’s corporation counsel and worked in the Hennepin County attorney’s office in Minneapolis. She got her bachelor’s degree from UW-Eau Claire and her law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. She lives with her five children and husband in Neillsville.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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