What does a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice do?
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is made up of seven justices, elected to 10-year terms in statewide, nonpartisan April elections. The court needs at least four votes for a majority opinion to make law. Otherwise, concurring, dissenting or plurality opinions are non-binding.
The Supreme Court has the final say on a lot of state issues, including the interpretation of the Wisconsin Constitution, the interpretation of Wisconsin state laws and reviewing the actions of other state officials, like governors and agency officials at the state and local level.
What’s the court’s role in deciding state law?
Currently, Wisconsin’s government is divided. There’s a Democratic governor and a Democratic attorney general, along with a GOP-controlled state Legislature. That means there’s not a lot of consensus, and many issues end up in the courts, from abortion to redistricting to unionizing for state employees.
All that’s up for grabs in 2026. Democratic governor Tony Evers is not running again, and half the state Senate and all 99 members of the Wisconsin Assembly are up for election this year under new maps which were put in place by the governor after the old maps favoring Republicans were overturned by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It’s possible that Democrats or Republicans could take full control over the executive and legislative branches in 2026, but it’s also possible that the branches stay divided and the Wisconsin Supreme Court continues its role as arbiter of disagreements between them.
Who are the candidates?
READ: Meet the candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court
Wisconsin Court of Appeals District 4 Judge Chris Taylor, who is backed by liberals, and Wisconsin Court of Appeals District 2 Judge Maria Lazar, who is backed by conservatives, are running in the April 7 election.
This election is nonpartisan. What does that mean and is that actually true?
Wisconsin Supreme Court races are officially nonpartisan, so you're not going to see a D (Democratic) or an R (Republican) next to the candidates' names. But political parties have become more involved in the court races.
You’ll hear some candidates say that politics do not have a place in deciding cases. But, candidates have ways of making their ideological leanings known. Voters can draw conclusions about a candidate’s leanings based on what groups or individuals have endorsed them. The parties are very much involved in the race, with Republican and Democratic political action committees spending money on advertisements and Republican and Democratic leaders endorsing candidates.
What’s at stake?
The Wisconsin Supreme Court decides cases of statewide importance or that impact public policy or involve the interpretation of the state constitution. While the state Supreme Court is technically nonpartisan, it has been increasingly used to decide political fights on important issues like abortion, redistricting, collective bargaining, the environment, the governor’s powers, voting rights and more.
The court’s ideological balance isn’t immediately at stake, because the current makeup of the court is four liberal-leaning justices and three conservative-leaning ones, and the justice who is retiring is a conservative. However, UW-Madison politics professor Barry Burden points out that the justices serve 10-year terms, and the politics of the state might be very different later in that term.
Also, the unexpected could happen. “Occasionally we do see justices step aside,” says Burden. “They retire before their terms have come to completion. There could be a health problem or a death that also takes someone out of office unexpectedly. So, although the court right now is…four pretty reliable liberal votes and three reliable conservative votes, that could change.”
Keep reading for more information on some of the high-profile issues Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has decided or may decide in the future.
What’s the impact of the court on Legislative and Congressional district maps and other voting issues?
Redistricting means producing state and congressional-level voting district lines every ten years when new Census data comes out. In Wisconsin, after the 2010 Census, Republicans created maps that locked in almost a permanent majority for them at the state level.
In Dec. 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the legislative electoral maps that cemented those Republican majorities in the state's Assembly and Senate. That meant that in February 2024, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed maps that he proposed into law. The Legislature passed those Evers-drawn maps to avoid having the state Supreme Court draw the lines.
In November 2024, Democrats flipped 10 seats in the state Assembly and four seats in the state Senate, reducing Republicans’ majority.
There are two cases that deal with Congressional redistricting currently in Wisconsin’s court system. Plaintiffs are asking for the state’s eight Congressional districts to be redrawn for different legal reasons under the state constitution.
“Those are likely to get back to the state Supreme Court and be decided sometime soon,” says Burden. “[But] probably not soon enough for this year's midterm elections to be affected.”
He says that’s just one type of voting-related lawsuit likely coming to the state’s highest court. “It would not be surprising to see lawsuits again around absentee ballots, around voter registration, around non-citizens voting,” he says. “And [around] the voter registration rolls and requirements to become registered, given the salience of that issue nationally and Republicans concerned about it.”
Could abortion issues still come before the court?
In 2025, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that abortion is legal in Wisconsin. Currently, abortions are available in the state up to 20 weeks post-fertilization.
The court did not take up whether the Wisconsin Constitution can be read as protecting abortion access as part of a larger right to privacy — sometimes known as bodily autonomy — included in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that is written into the state constitution. There could also be other cases dealing with abortion or reproductive rights in various ways.
“Although conservatives are not going to take control of the court this year – it's just not mathematically possible – it is possible for the liberals to grow their majority from the current four to three mix to a five to two mix if Taylor were to beat Lazar,” says Burden.
He says that might encourage groups that favor a progressive answer to the abortion question to bring more cases to the court, “if they feel as though they've got a five-seat majority there, and even losing a justice would still let them prevail on some important cases.”
Will the court support the ability of state employees to collectively bargain?
In 2025, a trial court struck down Act 10, the law that gutted collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin for most public sector employees, including in state agencies, universities and school districts.
Act 10 caused weeks of protests in 2011 at the Wisconsin State Capitol. People organized against the GOP-led Legislature and the administration of Republican Gov. Scott Walker. A federal court upheld the law in April 2014, which has effectively reduced the ability of those public sector employees to organize and join unions and negotiate wages and benefits.
The trial court ruled that the Legislature didn’t have a “reasonable rationale” for allowing municipal police officers, municipal firefighters, deputy sheriffs, state traffic patrol and state motor vehicle inspectors to collectively bargain, but not including categories like Capitol Police, UW police and conservation wardens.
“It's amazing that this is still being dealt with in the courts,” says Burden, “But there is a significant case that the [state] Supreme Court is likely to resolve fairly soon that might restore some rights to workers and undo some important parts of that act.”
He says this may not be the last word, which is another reason for voters to care about this election. “I think it's a sign of just the central importance of our state Supreme Court in wading into some of the biggest, most contentious issues that the two other branches of government aren't able to resolve on their own.”
How might the court impact K-12 education in Wisconsin?
There are some funding and policy issues related to K-12 education that are bubbling up around the state that may come back to the state Supreme Court, notes Burden.
“There is the veto power of the governor and the funding formula for schools,” explains Burden. “There was just a case filed in Eau Claire trying to force the state Legislature to provide more generous and more equitable funding to school districts around the state that could end up being a Supreme Court case.”
“There are a variety of lower level disputes in cases around the state dealing with gender and transgender rights in schools, and what kinds of policies the schools can have in terms of students’ use of pronouns and other other kinds of treatments of issues in schools or in curricula,” says Burden. “Those could end up being cases that come back to the [state] Supreme Court.”
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