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The Wisconsin Supreme Court begins oral arguments in September under a new 5-2 liberal majority and faces a term that could feature politically charged cases, including those challenging the state’s congressional maps and seeking to restore collective bargaining rights for many public sector unions. 

The pending cases before the high court so far, and other legal issues that may arise over the course of the term, provide ample opportunity to observe how the justices operate under a new liberal supermajority, court watchers said. Will they accept more cases following a streak of fewer decisions in recent years than in prior terms? How will the justices respond in real time to election issues during the midterms? Will they change the long-standing approach the court uses to interpret state statutes?  

“Now that there is a clear majority, not just a one-vote majority, it’s entirely possible that the justices will start to differentiate themselves from one another more,” said Chad Oldfather, a professor at the Marquette University Law School. “Because there’s less of a pressure to act as a bloc.” 

The high court’s liberal majority grew to five after Chris Taylor’s dominant April victory in the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race to replace conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. Liberal justices have won five of the last six Wisconsin Supreme Court elections, shifting the court from a 5-2 conservative majority in 2018. 

The liberal wing includes Taylor, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky and justices Rebecca Dallet, Janet Protasiewicz and Susan Crawford. The conservatives include justices Annette Ziegler and Brian Hagedorn, who is often a swing vote.

“I’m guessing that it’s going to not seem like a 5-2 court this coming term,” said Alan Ball, a Marquette University professor who operates the SCOWstats blog that analyzes Wisconsin Supreme Court statistics. “Maybe like a 5-1-1: five liberals and then Ziegler is a conservative, and then Hagedorn, you know, who knows?” 

During the 2025 term, Hagedorn voted more often with the liberal wing of the court in split decisions than Crawford did in her first year as a justice, according to Ball’s review of the previous term. But Crawford aligned more with fellow liberals and Hagedorn with conservatives on more political issues, such as a case in the last term between Attorney General Josh Kaul and the Legislature over who controls settlement funds, Ball noted. 

Justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments in 16 cases across seven days between Sept. 8 and Oct. 13. More cases could rise to the high court over the course of the new term. 

What decisions will justices make about the congressional map?

Justices will hear oral arguments related to two lawsuits challenging Wisconsin’s congressional map on Sept. 16, but any decisions are not expected to impact the 2026 midterm elections, in which primary elections have already set up the candidates in races this November. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court last November tapped two three-judge panels to hear the cases challenging the congressional maps as unconstitutional. One case, brought by a group of voters, argued the maps are a partisan gerrymander. The other case, brought by the Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy, argues the congressional maps are an anti-competitive gerrymander.

Both panels dismissed the challenges in separate rulings this spring, writing that only the high court could make decisions about the existing congressional maps. The voters and the business group appealed the decisions. 

The issues before the justices in September for the voter-brought case include whether Wisconsin’s constitution allows partisan gerrymandering and, for the Wisconsin Business Leaders case, whether the three-judge panel was wrong in considering “anti-competitive” and partisan gerrymandering as the same argument. 

Lucas Vebber, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, who is representing multiple intervenors in both maps cases, said their position remains that the Wisconsin constitution does not allow the groups in these cases to bring their gerrymandering claims. 

“This is a primary function of the Legislature,” Vebber explained. “Courts have a role to play, but they should stay within that role and not go beyond.” 

Jeff Mandell, general counsel for Law Forward, a progressive law firm representing the Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy in its case, said attorneys have asked the justices to issue a decision by the end of this year ahead of jury trial dates in April in that case.  

“If we’re able to hold that trial in April, that should provide time for the trial court to do its work, and for there to be an appeal if need be,” Mandell said. “And for there to be new districts that are constitutional for the 2028 congressional elections.” 

There would be no need for a trial if the high court affirms the three-judge panel’s dismissal, which would leave the existing maps in place. 

Will emergency election issues rise to the high court? 

While the court considers issues in the congressional maps case, legal experts say the stakes of the 2026 midterm elections make it likely that the justices could face potential fast-moving cases on voting and election-related issues. 

“We’ve had these fights over ballot boxes and whether you need to have a witness see your vote if you’re disabled. There was a whole issue of what has to be available for a disabled voter,” said Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice and professor at the Marquette University Law School. “Those kinds of things people can go right to the court and say ‘We’re going to bypass everybody. This is an emergency. We need the court to issue a ruling.’ I suspect, especially with all the talk of voting integrity or voting fraud … that we’re going to see that.” 

Recently, the high court ordered an expedited process for briefings in an appeal filed by the Democratic National Committee about a 2024 case that sought answers to whether a circuit court has the authority to extend hours at a polling location past 8 p.m.

The Waukesha-based 2nd District Court of Appeals this summer reversed a Walworth County judge’s order from the 2024 presidential election that allowed polling locations at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus to stay open until 10:30 p.m. on Election Day. The 2nd District in July reversed the decision, arguing it is up to the Legislature to determine polling hours. 

The court has yet to accept the DNC’s petition for review, but Ziegler questioned the majority’s motives in her lone dissent against speeding up the briefing process. The majority did not offer an explanation for expediting that timeline.

“We know not why this matter races to the front of the line. One would think further explanation would be forthcoming,” wrote Ziegler, who is not seeking reelection and is in her final year on the court. “One would think the majority would be more cautious to not appear to favor the political party that spent seemingly endless amounts of money to get them elected.” 

Will justices accept a case to restore pre-Act 10 collective bargaining rights? 

In late July, the 2nd District Court of Appeals reversed a 2024 Dane County Circuit Court ruling that restored collective bargaining rights for many public sector unions and employees. The unions in the case appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court less than three weeks later. 

The issues in this case stem from whether portions of Act 10 — the 2011 law signed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker that spurred massive protests at the Capitol — that separate public safety and general public employees violate equal protection guarantees in Wisconsin’s constitution.

Geske said she sees a stronger argument in this case than past legal challenges to Act 10. But the justices will have to determine whether the court is held to previous opinions it has made related to Act 10, she said.

“I think that most of the justices who felt that are gone or no longer in the majority,” Geske said. 

Mandell, who is among the attorneys representing the unions in the case, said he expects the high court to decide whether to take the case sometime this fall. 

“If the court takes the case in the fall, then there’s ample time for it to be briefed and argued this term,” Mandell said. “Which means that by around the Fourth of July, we should have a final answer in Wisconsin about Act 10.” 

If the petition is accepted, the case would move forward without Hagedorn, who in January 2025 said he would not participate in the case. Hagedorn was chief legal counsel for Walker when Act 10 was drafted. 

What should courts use to interpret state laws? 

In a seemingly minor case about whether a former salesperson for a window company was eligible for unemployment insurance, the high court is expected to determine if it should use a new framework to interpret state statutes. 

For years, the courts have relied on a 2004 case that placed limits on when to use outside evidence, such as legislative history, to understand state statutes. Justices and legal experts have described the case, Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane County, as the most cited in Wisconsin Supreme Court history. 

The question before the high court is whether justices should take “a broader, holistic approach” to interpret state laws than what the Kalal case allows. 

“It’s really about how much we trust judges, or in this case, judges trust themselves to adequately or accurately assess things that legislators say,” Oldfather said. “Because the fear, of course, is that legislators will say self-serving things about what they pass into law.” 

The case has not been scheduled for oral arguments, but is among pending cases before the justices. Oldfather said it’s likely the majority will take the approach that Dallet wrote about in a 2021 case about conditions in a pollution discharge permit issued by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. 

In 2021, Dallet wrote that the court’s approach to statutory interpretation should be “more comprehensive,” although she acknowledged that some sources may be more reliable than others.

“Such a holistic methodology would lead to more transparent analyses in which the court is upfront and honest about considering relevant extrinsic sources to interpret a statute’s meaning,” Dallet wrote in 2021. “That includes being transparent about those sources’ actual analytical value when they support more than one reasonable inference.”

Dallet brought up that approach again in a 2025 concurring opinion for a case that determined employees of University of Wisconsin hospitals and clinics did not have the ability to collectively bargain under Act 10. 

Bradley, who left the court in July, in the same 2025 decision criticized Dallet’s effort and said a “holistic” approach “would remove any remaining constraints on judicial overreach.” 

“It’s an open appeal for judges in this state to legislate from the bench,” Bradley wrote. “This court should stay the course and reject Justice Dallet’s invitation to unmoor the judiciary from the rule of law.”

Elections, Act 10 top list of hot-button issues facing Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new liberal supermajority 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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Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, will not face criminal charges in Wisconsin for promising $1 million checks to voters during the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, a Democrat, who was tapped as a special prosecutor to review the case, wrote in a letter Tuesday that he did not believe a jury would convict Musk of a crime. 

“I have routinely worked with campaigns and candidates from both parties and nonpartisan elections to correct any potential violations of election/campaign laws,” Gruenke wrote. “In this case, without the famous name attached and the large dollar amounts involved, it is a simple case of a poorly worded statement that was corrected and brought into compliance with the law.”

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic nominee for governor, said during a campaign stop in Madison he was “befuddled” by the decision.

Crowley, who said he had not read the reasoning behind the decision, was confused how Musk’s promises ahead of a 2025 event in Green Bay did not violate state laws. 

Wisconsin law prohibits a person from offering, promising, giving or lending anything of value to someone to convince the person to go to the polls, vote or refrain from voting. The Wisconsin Elections Commission in July found that Musk likely broke the law and referred complaints to the Brown County District Attorney’s Office, which earlier this month referred the case to Gruenke as a special prosecutor after identifying a conflict of interest. 

“We are talking about someone who publicly talked about giving a million dollars to folks to actually go vote, which is absolutely against the law here in the state of Wisconsin,” Crowley told reporters outside a health clinic in Madison.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee for governor, did not immediately respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch Tuesday afternoon. 

Crowley on Tuesday did not say whether he would support additional legislation to strengthen the state’s election bribery laws.

“I would assume that our laws are very clear as far as the fact that we cannot give more than $1 to make sure that people are voting,” he said. “I think the laws are extremely clear.” 

Democratic state lawmakers last year proposed bills seeking to expand the state’s election bribery laws to prohibit payments to voters for signing petitions during an election, like in the Musk case. The legislation died without receiving a hearing in the Republican-controlled Legislature. 

The context 

About $144.5 million was spent on the 2025 election between now-Justice Susan Crawford and former Attorney General Brad Schimel, making it the most expensive state supreme court race in U.S. history. Musk spent about $30 million of that total, which included giveaways to conservative voters.

The issues stemmed from social media posts Musk made in March 2025. The first post promoted an event in Wisconsin in which Musk said entrance would be “limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court Election” in addition to providing million-dollar checks to voters “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.” 

Musk hours later shared a message that entrance was limited to people who signed a petition “in opposition to activist judges” and the million-dollar checks would be provided to spokespersons for the petition. 

Gruenke said he did not believe a jury would convict Musk given that nothing was given to individuals for voting.

“Even if I could convince a jury that the original post was still a bribe, I do not believe that a jury would convict Elon Musk of a crime after considering the intent, the second post, and the fact nothing of value was ever given to anyone for voting for an incident occurring in March of 2025,” Gruenke wrote. 

Musk still faces a civil lawsuit in Brown County Circuit Court brought by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign regarding bribery allegations tied to the 2025 state Supreme Court race.

Elon Musk won’t face criminal charges for offering voters $1 million checks during 2025 Supreme Court election 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 unions that won a circuit court ruling to overturn Wisconsin’s Act 10, the 2011 law stripping most public employees’ collective bargaining rights, are asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reinstate that ruling after an appeals court reversed the lower court.

The plaintiffs filed their state Supreme Court appeal Monday. They include unions affiliated with the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters.

Act 10, one of the signature laws passed early in former Gov. Scott Walker’s two terms, ended collective bargaining rights for most state and local employees, making an exception for certain public safety employees. The law survived a series of court challenges in the years immediately after its passage.

In December 2024, however, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost ruled  that the law made an arbitrary distinction between the public safety employees who kept their union rights under Act 10 and other public safety employees who lost those rights.

State Capitol Police, University of Wisconsin Police, and state conservation wardens were “treated unequally with no rational basis for that difference” when they were denied collective bargaining, Frost ruled, and for that reason, Act 10 violated the Wisconsin Constitution’s equal protection clause.

The law remained in place pending appeals, and more than 18 months later, the 2nd District Court of Appeals overturned Frost’s ruling in a 2-1 decision July 29.

The Legislature’s reasoning for making the distinction wasn’t an issue, so long as there are “any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification,” Judges Mark Gundrum and Shelley Grogan wrote.

Judge Lisa Neubauer dissented, arguing that the unions that kept their bargaining rights had all supported Walker’s election in 2010 just months before he took office and signed Act 10 into law. Excluding them from the law while subjecting other public safety employees to its restrictions “is not based on any identified ‘substantial distinction’ that makes the first group really different from the other,” Neubauer wrote.

The new appeal quotes Neubauer’s dissent in arguing for the justices to take up the case.

“This Court should accept review and reaffirm that, as Judge Neubauer put it in her dissent, ‘rational-basis review is not a rubber stamp,’” the unions’ motion states. “Here, because Act 10’s classification between ‘public safety’ and ‘general’ employees cannot survive anything greater than rubber-stamp-level scrutiny, that classification violates Article I, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution.”

The new appeal also challenges a finding from the appeals court majority, which found Wisconsin’s equal protection clause was identical to the federal equal protection clause and that a 2013 federal appeals court ruling had already found Act 10 constitutional.

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A Wisconsin appeals court on Wednesday overturned a ruling that had restored abolished collective bargaining rights, in a setback for unions and public workers in the state. Unions are expected to appeal, sending the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is controlled by liberal justices.

The 2024 ruling striking down the law as unconstitutional had been on hold pending appeal, so Wednesday’s reversal does not change the status quo. The law remains in effect, as it has been the past 15 years, as the legal fight continues.

Enactment of a 2011 anti-union state law, championed by Republicans, sparked weeks of protests and made Wisconsin the center of a national battle over union rights.

That law, known as Act 10, effectively ended most public employees′ ability to bargain for wage increases and other issues and forced them to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.

Supporters of the law say it gives local governments more control over workers and the powers needed to cut costs. They argue that repealing the law, which allowed schools and local governments to raise money through higher employee contributions for benefits, would bankrupt those entities.

Opponents argue the law has hurt schools and government agencies by stripping employees of the right to collectively bargain over pay and working conditions.

Christina Brey, a spokesperson for the unions that brought the lawsuit, said they remain confident on the merits of the case and that they are considering all available options.

“Wisconsin is better when all employees have a say in our workplaces, whether about class sizes in our schools, safety on the job, hours or any other number of areas,” Brey said. “Public service workers across the state won’t stop until we regain free, fair and full collective bargaining rights to negotiate with our employers.”

Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who introduced and championed the law, praised the decision.

“This ruling is a major win for the hard-working taxpayers of Wisconsin and the people they elect to run our schools, state, and local governments,” Walker said in a text message.

All five of the Democratic candidates for governor this year have vowed to repeal the law if elected. The primary is Aug. 11.

Tens of thousands protested the anti-union law at the state Capitol

The law was Walker’s signature legislative achievement, catapulting him onto the national political stage and spurring an unsuccessful attempt to recall him from office. Walker used the furor to mount a brief, ill-fated run for president that ended in 2015.

The Republican-controlled Legislature approved the law despite the massive protests that went on for weeks and drew as many as 100,000 people to the state Capitol.

The law effectively ended collective bargaining for most public unions by allowing them to bargain solely over base wage increases no greater than inflation. It also disallowed the automatic withdrawal of union dues, required annual recertification votes for unions and forced public workers to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits. It led to a dramatic decrease in union membership across Wisconsin.

The law has withstood numerous legal challenges over the years, but this is the first since the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped to liberal control in 2023.

The lawsuit, filed by seven unions and three union leaders, argued Act 10 should be struck down because it creates unconstitutional exemptions for firefighters and other public safety workers. Attorneys for the Legislature and state agencies countered that the exemptions are legal and have already been upheld by other courts and that the case should be dismissed.

The Legislature said in court filings that arguments made in the current case were rejected in 2014 by the state Supreme Court. The only change since that ruling is the makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, attorneys for the Legislature said.

Appeals court agrees with Republicans, questions timing of lawsuit

The three-judge appeals court panel ruled in a 2-1 decision to overturn a December 2024 ruling from Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost, saying the challenged provisions of the law did not violate equal protection guarantees of the Wisconsin Constitution.

The lower court “had no legal basis” to declare the law unconstitutional, the appeals court said.

The Wisconsin Legislature had a “rational basis” for only placing certain public safety workers under the law, the appeals court said.

“Courts must respect both precedent and our role in deferring to the Legislature’s fiscal policy decisions,” the appeals court said.

Appeals Court Judge Shelley Grogan said in a concurring opinion that the timing of the lawsuit was “to say the least, suspect.” The lawsuit was filed in November 2023, three months after the Wisconsin Supreme Court switched from majority conservative control to a majority of liberal justices.

“Renewed attempts to attack Act 10 on already-rejected bases simply because the composition of our supreme court has changed must be rejected,” Grogan wrote. “A law’s constitutionality does not ebb and flow with a court’s composition, and the judicial branch must not be used to advance political agendas on either side of the political spectrum.”

Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer, the lone liberal on the three-judge panel, dissented, saying the lower court was correct. She said the Legislature made “arbitrary and irrational distinctions” by taking away collective bargaining rights from some public employees but not others.

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.

Wisconsin appeals court overturns ruling that had restored collective bargaining power is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Pedro Colón has an early fundraising advantage over Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette in the 2027 state Supreme Court race, campaign finance reports filed this week show. 

Colón, a former Democratic member of the state Assembly and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge who has been on the District 1 Court of Appeals since 2023, raised more than $250,000 in the first reporting period of the race. That total includes a $30,000 personal loan to his campaign and a $20,000 in-kind contribution in which he was given the email list of Judge Chris Taylor’s winning Supreme Court race from this year’s election. Taylor has also endorsed Colón. 

Colón’s top donors include a $20,000 contribution from Mark Thomsen, a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

“I am truly honored to see the excitement and support that our campaign is generating across this state,” Colón said in a statement from his campaign. “We are building the grassroots momentum needed to win next spring and I could not be more grateful to the nearly 600 people who chipped in what they could to move our campaign forward.”

Brunette, the former Clark County District Attorney, raised $145,000 in the first reporting period. Her top donors include $20,000 from Patrick Guarasci, a political consultant who worked on the campaign of Justice Janet Protasiewicz, and Milwaukee-area philanthropist Deborah Kern. 

Both candidates were elected to their prior partisan positions as Democrats. They’re vying to replace conservative current Justice Annette Ziegler, who is retiring. A conservative candidate has not yet entered the race. A Colón or Brunette victory in next spring’s Supreme Court election would give liberals a 6-1 majority on the Court.

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Billionaire Elon Musk likely broke Wisconsin law when he promised to hand out $1 million checks to voters in the 2025 state Supreme Court election, a bipartisan panel has found.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission last week referred two complaints to the Brown County district attorney’s office, which can choose to bring criminal charges over violating the state law against election bribery. Prosecutors have 40 days to report back to the commission.

Musk, the founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, was deeply involved in the effort to flip majority control of the highest court in battleground Wisconsin.

The tech titan and groups he supported spent at least $20 million on the candidate backed by Republicans, Brad Schimel. However, he lost by 10 percentage points to Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford.

A month after the lopsided loss, Musk announced that he would be spending far less on political campaigns. Spending on the election topped $100 million, making it the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.

The complaints, which are confidential under state law, were brought by voters in Milwaukee and Green Bay, which is in Brown County. Musk handed out checks at a rally there just days before the election.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, consisting of three Democrats and three Republicans, voted 5-1 in closed session on Thursday to refer the complaints to the district attorney, the commission’s spokesperson Emilee Miklas said.

Brown County District Attorney David Lasee, a Republican, did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday.

The motion approved by the elections commission said it found probable cause that Musk broke Wisconsin law by making a social media post offering $1 million to people who voted in the Supreme Court election “in order to induce them to vote in that election.”

Spokespeople for Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk gave $1 million checks to 3 Wisconsin voters

Three Wisconsin voters received checks from Musk, including two who got them in person at the Green Bay rally. Two weeks before the election, Musk’s political action committee, America PAC, offered $100 to voters who signed a petition in opposition to “activist judges,” or referred someone to sign it.

Crawford’s win kept liberals in control of the state Supreme Court, and their majority grew to 5-2 after Democratic-backed candidate Chris Taylor’s victory this year.

Musk’s spending on the 2025 race has already resulted in one lawsuit filed by a government watchdog group, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which seeks to prohibit him from ever again offering cash payments in the state.

That lawsuit is pending in Brown County. It alleges that Musk and two groups he funds violated prohibitions on vote bribery and unauthorized lotteries and that his actions were an unlawful conspiracy and public nuisance.

Attempts to stop Musk failed in 2025

Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general sued to stop Musk from handing over the checks to two voters, but was rejected by state courts.

Musk’s attorneys argued in legal filings in 2025 that Musk was exercising his free speech rights with the giveaways and any attempt to restrict that would violate both the Wisconsin and U.S. constitutions.

The payments are “intended to generate a grassroots movement in opposition to activist judges, not to expressly advocate for or against any candidate,” Musk’s attorneys argued in court filings.

Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the 2024 presidential election, offering to pay $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second amendments. A judge in Pennsylvania said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.

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.

Elon Musk likely broke law by promising voters $1 million payouts, Wisconsin Elections Commission says 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 ruled Friday that the Wisconsin Attorney General can determine where to send money the Department of Justice receives through settlement agreements. 

The 5-2 decision — which includes a partial concurrence from Justice Brian Hagedorn — strikes down a measure enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature to take power from executive branch agencies after the elections of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul in 2018. 

During that lame duck period at the end of a Republican administration, the Legislature enacted a law that requires the attorney general to deposit settlement money into the state’s general fund, which is largely controlled by the Legislature. However within the general fund are many sub-accounts through which many of the state’s programs and services are rendered. State law distinguishes between depositing money into the general fund and crediting money to specific programs. 

Since the lame duck law’s enactment, Kaul has put settlement earnings into the general fund and then credited the money to DOJ programs within the fund. The Legislature has argued that Kaul has been purposefully flouting the intent of the law, which was to give control over the money to legislative Republicans. 

The legal dispute in the case, including at the oral arguments in March, has flipped the usual script in which Republicans argue for laws to be interpreted strictly, following exactly what a statute says. 

“[The statute] entitled “Deposit of settlement funds,” provides in its entirety that ‘[t]he attorney general shall deposit all settlement funds into the general fund,’” Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote in the majority opinion. “This simple, declarative sentence identifies a class of state money (‘settlement funds’) and imposes a single, narrow restriction on where that money must be deposited (into the state treasury, specifically ‘the general fund’). It says nothing whatsoever about where that money may or must be credited after it is deposited.”

Dallet continued that the Court wasn’t buying the Legislature’s argument that a deeper meaning should be read into the language.

Quoting the Court’s precedent, Dallet wrote, “The problem with these arguments is that ‘we interpret the statutory language the legislature enacted, and will not read into a statute language that it does not contain or reasonably imply.’” 

In a dissent, Justice Rebecca Bradley, partially joined by Annette Ziegler — both of whom signed off on many of the lame duck laws and their specific intent to disempower Democrats — argued that the Court’s majority was only aiming to give a legal victory to an elected Democrat in an election year.

“The majority refuses to apply the law, which favors the Republican-controlled legislature over Democrat Attorney General Josh Kaul. Lady Justice wears a blindfold, not blinders,” Bradley wrote in an opinion that also cited the 2004 film “Dodgeball.” “This is not the first time justice has taken a back seat to political interests. The members of the majority extend the Democrats’ almost unbroken winning streak in litigation against the Republican legislature since the progressives took control.”

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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Sensitive information about individuals who are judged mentally incapable of voting in Wisconsin is not accessible through the state’s public records laws, according to a 5-2 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling released Tuesday. 

Justice Brian Hagedorn, a frequent swing vote on the court, joined the liberal justices in the majority, which determined that state law shows the Legislature intended to keep Notices of Voting Eligibility closed from public access. The notices are documents the courts send to election officials after a judge concludes a person is found mentally incompetent to cast a ballot. 

“Our decision today is rooted in the legislature’s choice to protect the privacy of individuals subject to guardianship proceedings,” Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote for the majority. “The legislature said, with limited exceptions, ‘court records pertinent to the finding of incompetency are closed.’” 

In the same opinion, the majority provided specifics on what the court should consider when someone seeks to compel a public official to release public records, which is known as a “writ of mandamus.” The majority determined that the court “should consider only whether the requester has a right to the records,” which can be done through analyzing whether records exist, if there are statutory exceptions and if “the public policy balancing test weighs toward disclosure.” 

Bill Lueders, the president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said the court’s decision on mandamus actions “discarded an outdated standard for public records cases and reduced barriers to winning these cases in the future.”   

Conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented. In her dissent, Ziegler argued that the Notice of Voting Eligibility forms should be released because they are not relevant to incompetency proceedings and are created as “a communication of a finding” after that decision is made.

“The majority’s conclusion fails to recognize this important distinction: A finding of incompetency is distinct from a finding that one has lost the right to vote,” Ziegler wrote. “Instead, it adopts an overbroad and unworkable definition of what records pertain to a finding of incompetency to include NVEs. Holding that NVEs are shielded from the public records law runs counter to the statute’s language, scheme and the presumption of open government.” 

The case was originally brought in 2022 by the conservative Wisconsin Voter Alliance. The group filed lawsuits in 13 counties, arguing that having access to information about individuals who have been judged incompetent to vote would show inconsistencies in the state’s voter rolls. The alliance is led by Ron Heuer, who worked on the state’s partisan review of the 2020 presidential election results conducted by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. Heuer did not return phone calls or emails from Wisconsin Watch on Tuesday.

At the request of Wisconsin Watch, the Dane County clerk in 2023 conducted a review that  found 95 individuals who previously cast ballots despite a court finding them unable to do so. Election officials and state lawmakers have previously called for a legally binding process to track adjudicated incompetent voters, but no bill in recent years has made it through the legislative process. 

Disability advocates previously advocated for the information in Notice of Voting Eligibility forms to be kept private over concerns it could make vulnerable individuals more at risk of being scammed or exploited. 

Tuesday’s ruling is part of a complicated legal saga stemming from cases from Wisconsin Voter Alliance cases that have made their way through the state’s court system in recent years.

In 2024, the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals and the Waukesha-based 2nd District Court of Appeals issued conflicting opinions on separate but similar cases brought by the alliance. 

Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, who ran for the Wisconsin Supreme Court earlier this year, wrote the 2nd District opinion that supported the Wisconsin Voter Alliance’s position on access to the records. That opinion was released after the 4th District decision was published as precedent, but was revised after the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a ruling in January 2025.  

The high court in that 2025 decision only ruled on the differing Appeals Court opinions but did not reach a decision on whether Notices of Voting Eligibility are public records until Tuesday.

The case also became an attack point in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Justice-elect Chris Taylor in a debate before the April election pointed to Lazar’s Appeals Court opinion on access to sensitive records as evidence to claim that Lazar “brought an extreme right-wing political agenda to the bench.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects 2020 election investigator’s attempt to get voting eligibility records 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 issued a stay Monday in the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera’s lawsuit against local sheriff’s departments partnering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declining to hear arguments in the case until a federal appeal is exhausted. 

Voces filed the lawsuit against ICE’s 287(g) agreements with local sheriff’s departments last year and in December, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to accept the case as an original action. Across Wisconsin, 23 sheriff’s offices have agreed to assist federal immigration enforcement efforts through the controversial program. 

The Court’s decision to stay the case comes as ICE has become more active across the country in recent weeks, including in southern Wisconsin where dozens of immigrants were arrested by ICE last week. 

After the state court agreed to hear the case, the sheriffs of Walworth, Brown, Marathon, Kenosha and Sauk counties sued to move the case to federal court. U.S. Judge William Conley ruled in May they waited too long to file the petition and sent the case back to the state court.

The sheriffs have filed an appeal of the district court decision. Voces had requested that the Supreme Court set a schedule for filing briefs and holding arguments while the federal appeal is pending. 

In its Monday order, the Court said it wouldn’t move forward with the state case until the federal appeals are exhausted.

“To avoid potential uncertainty and conflict, we decline the petitioner’s request to order a briefing schedule that would allow the case to proceed simultaneously with the federal appeal of the order remanding the case to this court, and we grant a stay pending further order of this court,” the Court ruled. 

According to federal court records, the sheriffs’ briefs to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals are due by August 5 and Voces’ response is due by September 4.

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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.

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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.