Wisconsin's liberal-majority Supreme Court ruled 5-2 to block a conservative activist from accessing guardianship records he sought to cross-reference against the statewide voter registration list, closing off a potential tool for identifying ineligible voters in one of the nation's most closely watched battleground states.
The decision, reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, rejected a lawsuit filed in 2022 by Ron Heuer, who leads the Wisconsin Voters Alliance. Heuer had sought access to Notice of Voting Eligibility forms, court documents generated during guardianship proceedings, to determine whether individuals found legally incompetent remained on the voter rolls.
Four liberal justices joined with one conservative, Justice Brian Hagedorn, to form the majority. Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley, both conservatives, dissented. The ruling effectively bars the public from using guardianship records as a check on voter eligibility, and it does so under a privacy rationale that the dissenters argued stretches the law beyond recognition.
Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote the majority opinion, citing a state statute that declares "court records pertinent to the finding of incompetency are closed." The ruling, Protasiewicz wrote, "is rooted in the legislature's choice to protect the privacy of individuals subject to guardianship proceedings."
That framing treats the guardianship forms Heuer sought, documents that note whether a person has lost the right to vote, as inseparable from the underlying incompetency finding. The majority concluded that releasing those records would effectively expose the private details the statute was designed to shield.
Chief Justice Jill Karofsky and Justices Rebecca Dallet and Susan Crawford joined Protasiewicz in the majority. Hagedorn, a conservative who has occasionally broken with the court's right flank on election-related matters, sided with them.
Justice Ziegler's dissent drew a distinction the majority declined to make. A finding of incompetency, she argued, is not the same thing as a finding that someone has lost the right to vote. The majority blurred the two, and in doing so, locked away records that serve a different legal purpose.
"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 went further, calling the majority's interpretation "overbroad and unworkable." She wrote that shielding the guardianship forms from public records law "runs counter to the statute's language, scheme, and the presumption of open government."
That last phrase matters. Wisconsin, like most states, operates under a legal presumption that government records are open to the public unless a specific statute says otherwise. The dissenters argued the majority turned that presumption on its head by expanding the scope of the privacy shield well beyond what the legislature intended.
Justice Rebecca Bradley also dissented, though her opinion was not quoted in the court's published materials. Both Ziegler and Bradley have been described as leaving the court, a development that will further entrench its liberal majority.
Heuer and the Wisconsin Voters Alliance did not limit their effort to Walworth County. They filed lawsuits in 13 counties seeking the same guardianship-related voting eligibility forms. The Supreme Court ruling now settles the legal question statewide.
Heuer alleged that the Wisconsin Elections Commission's public website listed figures for "ineligible voters" that did not match counties' ward-level tallies. The precise nature of that discrepancy was not detailed in the court proceedings as reported, and the Elections Commission has not publicly responded to the claim.
The Wisconsin Voters Alliance has a history that invites scrutiny from both sides. The group filed three lawsuits over aspects of the 2020 presidential election, two of which sought to overturn results. Heuer himself was hired by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman as an investigator in a taxpayer-funded review of that election, a review that produced no actionable findings. Courts across the country have similarly grappled with election-related cases from 2020, often rejecting them on procedural or evidentiary grounds.
None of that history, however, changes the underlying legal question: whether the public has a right to access records that could reveal whether legally incompetent individuals remain registered to vote. The majority said no. The dissenters said the statute doesn't support that conclusion.
The Wisconsin ruling fits a broader pattern in which courts have constrained efforts to verify and clean voter rolls. A Biden-appointed federal judge halted a Trump-era voter verification system designed to help states cross-check their rolls, citing procedural concerns. In each case, the legal reasoning differs, but the practical result is the same: fewer tools available to identify voters who may not be eligible.
Wisconsin has been a flashpoint for election administration disputes for years. The state's Supreme Court, when it still held a conservative majority, issued a 4-3 ruling banning absentee ballot drop boxes outside of election offices, a decision reported by Fox News that Republicans praised as a victory for election integrity and Democrats condemned as voter suppression. That ruling affected elections in which over 40 percent of Wisconsin voters had cast mail ballots and at least 500 drop boxes were used across more than 430 communities.
The court's ideological composition has since shifted. The liberal bloc now holds a commanding 4-3 advantage, and with Ziegler and Bradley departing, that margin is poised to widen. The trajectory is clear: future election-related challenges in Wisconsin will face a court less sympathetic to arguments framed around ballot security and voter roll accuracy.
Other states have seen courts intervene in election processes in ways that carry significant consequences. A Virginia circuit court blocked certification of a redistricting referendum, declaring the vote unconstitutional, another instance of judicial power reshaping the electoral landscape.
The decision resolves the narrow legal question of whether guardianship records can be obtained through public records requests. But it leaves several practical questions hanging.
If the public cannot access these records, who is responsible for ensuring that individuals found legally incompetent are removed from voter rolls? The Wisconsin Elections Commission maintains a list of ineligible voters, but Heuer's allegation, that the commission's numbers don't match county-level data, has not been publicly addressed or refuted. The ruling offers no mechanism for independent verification.
The case also raises a question about the scope of privacy protections. The statute says records "pertinent to the finding of incompetency" are closed. The dissenters argued that a form noting whether someone has lost the right to vote is not itself a finding of incompetency, it is a consequence of one. The majority treated the two as interchangeable. That interpretive choice could have implications beyond voter eligibility, potentially shielding other downstream records generated by guardianship proceedings.
Meanwhile, courts in other states continue to shape ballot access and election administration in contested ways. An Alaska judge recently ordered a same-name challenger back onto a Republican primary ballot, illustrating how judicial decisions at every level carry outsized weight in election disputes.
The majority framed its ruling as a defense of vulnerable people, those under guardianship who deserve to have their legal proceedings kept private. That is a legitimate concern, and no serious person argues that guardianship records should be thrown open without restriction.
But the dissenters identified something the majority chose not to confront. There is a difference between protecting someone's medical or cognitive history and preventing the public from knowing whether ineligible names sit on the voter rolls. The forms Heuer sought do not describe a person's diagnosis. They describe a legal status, one that directly affects whether that person can lawfully vote.
A state that cannot verify its own voter rolls, or that actively prevents citizens from doing so, is a state that has chosen opacity over accountability. Wisconsin's liberal Supreme Court made that choice. The voters who have to live with the consequences did not get a say.
