If one case sums up the difference in judicial philosophy between the two candidates for State Supreme Court, it is Rise Inc. v. Wisconsin Elections Commission from 2024.
The issue? What constitutes a valid witness address on absentee ballots?
It’s a critical matter, given that, of the 3.5 million people who voted in the 2024 Presidential election in Wisconsin, 1.5 million cast their votes via absentee ballot. If only five percent of those had been tossed for incomplete witness addresses, more than 75,000 cast votes would have been denied.
The Republican-led state legislature had appealed an earlier ruling that an incomplete address – one that failed to include a zip code, for instance – did not invalidate a ballot if the clerk could determine the information to be otherwise reliable.
In July, just four months before the election, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld the so-called “clerk standard,” meaning ballots could not be automatically tossed due to incomplete witness information if the clerk was satisfied the witnesses’ address was, on the whole, accurate.
Judge Chris Taylor, one of the two candidates for State Supreme Court on April 7, was a member of that appeals court that upheld the clerk standard. Her opponent, Judge Maria Lazar, argues Taylor’s decision was an example of judicial activism.
“Judge Taylor’s opinion, on the merits, indicates how far an activist judge who legislates from the bench will go to alter procedures for election integrity,” Lazar campaign spokesman Nathan Conrad said of the witness address case. “Every commonsense citizen in Wisconsin knows that an address consists of a street name, number and municipality.”
It’s not surprising that Lazar, who describes her judicial philosophy as “originalism with a slice of textualism,” would take exception to Taylor’s decision in the case. She argues that a judge should look at laws as they are written and interpret them accordingly.
Significantly less money involved in this race
But Taylor counters that the legislature did not specify what constituted a valid address when it adopted the witness address requirement in 1966 – nor in any modifications of the statutes since. Furthermore – and more importantly – she argues, her judicial philosophy is more concerned with people’s rights and freedoms than it is with strict adherence to original doctrine.
“This decision balanced protecting each Wisconsinite’s right to vote with establishing a fair, uniform procedure for our local clerks,” Taylor campaign spokesman Sam Roecker told Wisconsin Watch. “As indicative of the strength of this decision, no party involved in the case appealed Judge Taylor’s decision.”
Unlike last year’s State Supreme Court race, which saw a record-setting $98 million in spending, including $20 million from Elon Musk’s various organizations, the race between Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor – both appellate court judges – figures to attract significantly less money. For one thing, no matter who wins, the judicial balance will remain in the hands of the liberal majority – either by a 4-3 or 5-2 margin. A victory by Taylor would ensure a liberal majority through at least 2030.
The newly elected Justice will replace conservative Rebecca Bradley, who decided not to run after her 10-year term expires this year.
Only a little more than $4 million had rolled into the two campaigns as of late February, with Taylor holding a nearly 10-to-1 advantage.
Nonetheless, donations from outside the state are sure to emerge. According to a list on Taylor’s website, out-of-state donations to her campaign amounted to more than $350,000 – or about 10% of her total – while, thus far, Lazar’s out-of-state money haul represents only about five percent of her total. It’s likely that wealthy Republican donors such as Diane Hendricks, the richest person in the state, and billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, will ultimately contribute to Lazar’s campaign, though they may be waiting to assess the state of the race. The last two Supreme Court elections have resulted in landslide wins for the liberal candidate and a recent Marquette poll had Taylor up seven points. A significant majority of those polled were undecided and knew little about the candidates.
Despite the large advantage Taylor has in out-of-state donations, she points to how few of Lazar’s donations are $200 or less – estimates are 5% or fewer – and how many of her own come from small donors. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel estimates 80-85% of Taylor’s contributions are $100 or less.
Disturbing alliances
The Taylor camp also points to what they see as disturbing alliances Lazar has forged with election deniers, such as Michael Gableman, who lost his law license after false allegations surrounding the 2020 election. She has also made appearances, Taylor points out, with such other so-called election deniers as Northeast Wisconsin Patriots and Fox Valley Initiative.
When it comes to then President Trump’s attempts to toss out nearly 200,000 ballots from Dane and Milwaukee Counties in that election, Taylor is quick to note that it was only a 4-3 majority that preserved the state for Joe Biden, with conservative justice Brian Hagedorn joining the majority to avert a potential post-election fiasco.
Lazar has remained largely silent on the matter, though in 2024 she wrote an opinion contradicting another appeals court ruling that would have allowed a conservative group questioning the election results to access confidential health records to determine if they were mentally fit to vote.
Both candidates sit on the Court of Appeals – Lazar, in Waukesha; Taylor in Madison. Each arrived via starkly different avenues. Lazar calls her opponent a politician and, indeed, Taylor did spend 10 years in the State Assembly after working for years as an attorney and policy director for Planned Parenthood. In 2020, Gov. Evers appointed her to the Dane County Circuit Court before she won election to the Court of Appeals in 2023.
Lazar was in private practice for two decades and was appointed by Gov. Scott Walker as Assistant Attorney General in 2010. She, too, served as a circuit court judge prior to winning a seat on the Court of Appeals in 2022.
Important cases await the next Court
Among the critical matters that figure to come before the State Supreme Court in the next term are abortion rights, voting rights, education funding, labor rights and redistricting. And with the federal government making more and more incursions in these areas, state supreme courts are seen as potential guardrails.
“It has never been more important in my lifetime to have a strong state supreme court and justices that are committed to protecting individual rights and freedoms, to protecting our democracy and elections,” Taylor recently told Spectrum News.
She told PBS Wisconsin that voters “deserve a court that is going to make sure that the other branches of government are held accountable, including the federal government when they overreach into the independence of our state.”
Though the court overturned the 1849 abortion law, effectively nullifying the Dobbs decision from 2021 that overturned Roe v. Wade, challenges are certain to continue. Taylor criticized Lazar for siding with the Dobbs decision and told the Wisconsin Independent that, as a mother herself, she values the decisions pregnant women ultimately face.
“My values say that those are not decisions for politicians,” she said. “Those are decisions for individuals with their doctors, so they can get the health care that they need.”
Lazar called Dobbs “a good move forward,” saying the states should have the freedom to decide what limits to place on reproductive rights. She told Channel 3000 News in November, “The issuance of Dobbs, which everyone threw tantrums about and were very upset about, was actually very wise.”
Act 10 is another decision that could still be on the docket by the time the new Justice is seated in August. Act 10 was the highly divisive legislation in 2011 that, among other things, took away collective bargaining rights from public employees and raised their benefits costs. Many elements of the law were ruled unconstitutional by a circuit court judge in Madison, and it now rests with the Waukesha Court of Appeals, on which Maria Lazar sits. A ruling is expected in the first half of this year with a near-certain appeal to the State Supreme Court to follow.
Redistricting could also wind up at the Supreme Court, this time regarding the U.S. Congressional maps in the state. In 2024 the Court struck down the state legislature maps, put in place by the Republican majority in 2011 and considered the most gerrymandered in the country. At the time the Congressional maps were left in place but another challenge to the maps is making its way through two three-judge panels, assigned by the State Supreme Court after it refused to rule on the maps before the midterms.
Weighing precedent
On the matter of precedent, or stare decisis, Lazar says she is mostly bound to honor it, though she supported the Dobbs decision which ended 50 years of precedent by overturning Roe.
“Precedent is something I respect,” she told PBS Wisconsin. “It’s a credit to cases that have been done. And you give them time to maybe air. When courts have overturned precedent – the U.S. Supreme Court in general – it’s something that’s maybe 20, 30 years down the road. It’s not something that they just do willy-nilly as Scalia would say, it’s something that you have to have seen that it doesn’t work. You can’t just say, ‘I’m now the member of the majority so everything that was done, I get to undo that.’”
As for Taylor, she says she’ll always look to see if that law violates the constitution or denies protections before she would overrule precedent.
“Does it protect or take away people’s constitutional rights?” she said. “Has this been in place for a long time such that people have relied on these protections. The Dobbs case took away rights that Wisconsin women had come to depend on for fifty years over the entire course of my life.”
Taylor pointed to Plessy vs. Ferguson as an example of precedent that needed desperately to be overturned despite its “separate but equal” doctrine being the law of the land for nearly 60 years when it was overturned by Brown vs. The Board of Education.
“Did that law comport with constitutional protections?” she said. “No. That was a long-time decision but thank god there was a case that overturned it.”
ICE and CBP could end up on the docket
Suddenly, potentially popping up on the judicial radar, is the matter of the Department of Homeland Security’s deployment of thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents to Minnesota. While the constitutional violations they have committed have almost all redounded to federal courts, Taylor says she sees how the state courts could ultimately play a role if DHS begins shifting its operations to Wisconsin.
“Wisconsin residents are really concerned by what they’re seeing in Minnesota,” she told NPR. “They’re afraid, and I don’t blame them. So yes, state courts absolutely could be involved, because criminal charges are brought in state courts typically. Nobody is above the law. The Constitution applies to everyone. And so, I think that we will see some involvement, or potentially see involvement, if there are criminal charges filed in the Minnesota state courts, and that could happen here in Wisconsin as well.”
Lazar was much more circumspect on the matter, saying she thinks the federal courts are the ultimate arbiters when it comes to Homeland Security matters.
The election is April 7, with early voting beginning generally two weeks before the election. Check your location to find out dates, times and locations. You may request an absentee ballot at any time.
