In a 5-2 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an activist group does not have the right to obtain the documents that notify election officials when someone is declared incompetent to vote by a circuit court judge. 

The group, Wisconsin Voter Alliance, has been extremely active in the state’s election denial circles since the 2020 presidential election. The organization is run by Ron Heuer, a prominent and vocal 2020 election conspiracy theorist, and Erick Kaardal, an attorney who was heavily involved in former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s widely discredited review of the 2020 presidential election. 

Kaardal’s involvement in the Gableman review included conducting videotaped interviews with residents of nursing homes alleged to have voted despite being old that were criticized at the time as exploitative and misleading about the law. 

Following that thread from the Gableman investigation, in 2022 the alliance filed open records requests in a number of counties seeking the notice of voting eligibility forms that circuit courts send to local and state election officials when a judge declares a person incompetent and ineligible to vote. The group then sued to force the release of those documents. 

The statute guiding declarations of incompetency and the process through which a person declared incompetent can lose their voting rights includes a provision that states court records “pertinent to the finding of incompetency” are closed. 

In the majority opinion written by Justice Janet Protasiewicz and joined by the other three liberal justices plus conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Court ruled that the NVE form is created as part of a guardianship case, therefore it’s pertinent to the finding of incompetency and shielded from public disclosure. 

Protasiewicz wrote that the Legislature crafted the guardianship law specifically to prevent information about people who have been declared incompetent from being made public — so it doesn’t make sense to interpret that law in a way that exposes those people’s status and private information. Additionally, the law specifically requires that someone must prove they have a legitimate “need” to find out if a person has been declared incompetent.

“The legislature created a procedure with ‘closed’ hearings and ‘closed’ records,” she wrote. “That provision would ring hollow if the fruits of those proceedings, like NVE forms, were available through public records requests. Even more revealing, a person who demonstrates ‘a need’ may access ‘[t]he fact that an individual has been found incompetent.’ Thus, the Legislature contemplated that even the fact that a person was found incompetent should be protected. We will not interpret the preceding sentence of [the statute] to allow any public records requester access to a form that gives away that very fact.” 

In a dissent, Justice Annette Ziegler, joined by Justice Rebecca Bradley, argued that because a judge determines if someone under guardianship must lose their vote separately from the initial declaration of incompetency and because the information gets communicated to election officials, the NVE is not “pertinent” to the incompetency finding and the public must be given access. 

“Even when an individual is found to be incompetent, a court may or may not be called upon to determine if the ward is ‘incapable of understanding the objective of the elective process,’” Ziegler wrote. “If and when such a determination is separately found, then NVEs are created to notify the WEC that the ward has lost the right to vote. But, the NVEs do not bear on the court’s separate, earlier finding of incompetency. And, as the NVE does not exist at the time of the incompetency finding, it could not be a court record pertinent to the finding of incompetency. Instead, an NVE is generated only after the incompetency finding is made and in response to the separate question of the right to vote.” 

Both Ziegler and Bradley have often sided with Wisconsin’s election deniers — including voting in late 2020 to overturn the results of Wisconsin’s presidential election after former President Joe Biden won in the state over  President Donald Trump. In the dissent, Ziegler echoed frequent right-wing talking points about “the integrity of the election process” and wrote that members of the public have the right to interrogate if their fellow citizens are eligible to vote. 

“The public records law declares that ‘a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate’ and that the public is entitled to the ‘greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government,’” she wrote. “That policy carries particular force here, where the records at issue bear directly on everyone’s voting rights and its administration. Undoubtedly, the public has a significant interest in ensuring that only those legally qualified to vote participate in elections. Improper ballots not only raise concerns of individual exploitation but also implicate the integrity of the electoral process as a whole.”

Following the decision, voting rights advocates celebrated the majority’s decision to protect voter privacy. 

“Like all Wisconsinites, individuals under guardianship deserve dignity and respect,” Law Forward Legal Fellow Taylor Gilbertson said in a statement. “It should go without saying that any effort to reveal their private voting records would risk a profound injustice. The Court was right to protect them.”

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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.