Supreme Court Upholds Evers’ ‘400 Years’ Budget Veto

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has upheld Gov. Tony Evers’ partial budget veto that extended a temporary school funding increase by 400 years, despite justices previously calling it “extreme” and “outrageous.”

The 4-3 decision by the court’s liberal majority preserves the governor’s vast partial veto powers, which were already unique nationwide.

Evers’ made national news in July 2023 when he used his veto pen to strike digits and a hyphen in a state budget line to extend a $325 per-pupil funding increase, which Republican lawmakers intended to expire this year, through 2425. The governor said it would “provide school districts with predictable, long-term increases for the foreseeable future.”

Republicans were outraged by the gambit and attempted to override the veto. They got halfway there thanks to what was then a GOP supermajority in the state Senate, but fell short of the required votes in the state Assembly.

The lawsuit, decided Friday by the Supreme Court, was filed in March 2024 by two taxpayers from Green Bay and Kimberly. They asked justices to declare that the Wisconsin Constitution forbids governors from striking individual digits in spending bills to create a new year and doesn’t authorize legislation to be extended by more than what legislators intended.

Writing for the majority, liberal Justice Jill Karofsky said the court is “acutely aware” that the 400-year school funding increase “is both significant and attention-grabbing.”

“However, our constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable,” said Karofsky.

Karofsky said the plaintiffs in the case never asked the court to overrule past decisions upholding various partial vetoes. A governor’s partial veto powers are limited, she wrote, when it comes to vetoing individual letters to create new words. But in the case at hand, Evers vetoed individual numbers to create a new number.

“In short, the plain language of the constitutional text permits striking numbers written out with digits,” Karofsky said.

Karofsky laid out options for state lawmakers upset with their ruling. She said they could address the 400-year funding increase in the next state budget, which is currently being drafted. She also referenced multiple ongoing efforts to amend the state constitution to restrict governors’ veto powers.

Lastly, Karofsky said lawmakers can exclude funding appropriations from bills they write “to avoid the governor’s partial veto.”

In a scathing dissent, conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn said the majority’s ruling “cannot be justified under any reasonable reading of the Wisconsin Constitution.”

“How does a bill become a law?” Hagedorn asked. “According to the majority, one option looks like this: The legislature passes a bill in both houses and sends it to the governor. The governor then takes the collection of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks he receives from the legislature, crosses out whatever he pleases, and—presto!—out comes a new law never considered or passed by the legislature at all. And there you have it—a governor who can propose and enact law all on his own.”

Hagedorn said today’s “fantastical state of affairs did not appear all at once,” but is the result of governors pushing the boundaries of the constitution’s partial veto powers enacted nearly a century ago and the court largely siding with them.

“One might scoff at the silliness of it all, but this is no laughing matter,” Hagedorn wrote. “Yet when presented with a clear opportunity in this case to reboot our mangled jurisprudence, the majority responds by blessing this constitutional monstrosity, all the while pretending its hands are tied.”

Hagedorn’s dissent was joined by Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Justice Rebecca Bradley, both conservatives.

While the 4-3 decision followed the court’s ideological split, it was not exactly seen as a foregone conclusion.

During oral arguments in October, both conservative and liberal justices spoke skeptically about the 400-year veto. Liberal Justice Rebecca Dallet said at the time that it “seems extreme” and liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz said “it seems to be outrageous.”

Evers hails ruling as good for kids, Robin Vos says Wisconsinites should ‘worry’

In a statement, Evers celebrated the ruling with a social media post that ended with “Hell Yes!” He said his use of the partial veto is similar to those “used by decades’ worth of Wisconsin governors” including former Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

“This decision is great news for Wisconsin’s kids and our public schools, who deserve sustainable, dependable, and spendable state support and investment,” Evers said.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, saw things differently. In a statement, he accused the Supreme Court’s liberal majority of being a “rubber stamp for liberal ally Tony Evers.” “The Supreme Court’s partisan decision today should worry every Wisconsinite,” Vos said. “The Governor can now raise property taxes – unchecked by any other branch of government – for hundreds of years.”

Both Democratic and Republican governors have embraced partial vetoes

Wisconsin’s partial veto power dates back to 1930, amid concerns about state lawmakers adding multiple appropriation and policy items into what are known as omnibus bills.

The goal of the constitutional amendment that authorized the partial veto was to give governors more power to reject items, one by one.

Both Democratic and Republican governors have been keen on partial vetoes. In 2017, former Republican Gov. Scott Walker struck individual digits in a state budget to change a one-year moratorium on school referendums that raise taxes for energy efficiency projects into a 1,000-year moratorium.

Before him, former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle used a partial veto to combine parts of unrelated sentences in a 2005 budget to transfer more than $400 million from Wisconsin’s transportation fund into the general fund.

In 1987, former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson partially struck phrases, digits, letters and word fragments to create new sentences and figures in a state budget.

Supreme Court has generally allowed partial vetoes to stand

For as long as Wisconsin has had a partial veto, there have been legal battles over how governors have wielded the unique power. Overall, the Supreme Court has mostly upheld partial vetoes in decisions between 1935 and 1995.

Bryna Godar is an attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She told WPR Friday’s ruling continues a tradition of the Supreme Court blessing governors’ wide ranging partial veto power.

“This case is really picking up what had been a really long line of cases since the 1900’s allowing the governor to do increasingly creative things with the partial veto power,” Godar said.

Things changed in 2020, when three of four partial state budget vetoes from Evers in the 2019 state budget were struck down by the Supreme Court’s former conservative majority.

But that case was decided by what is known as a fractured ruling, with four different opinions issued by justices that provided different tests for whether a partial veto can be constitutional.

Godar said because there wasn’t a unified majority opinion in that case, the majority on Friday focused on past court precedents that have “set very few, if any, guardrails on what the governor can do with the partial veto.”

As for the proposed constitutional amendment limiting partial vetoes circulating in the state Capitol, Godar said Wisconsin has seen it twice before.

In 1990, voters approved a constitutional amendment specifying governor’s can’t create new words by striking individual letters. In 2008, voters barred governors from combining parts of unrelated sentences.

“And it’s certainly something that we could see happen again, going forward.” Godar said.

Editor’s note: This story will be updated.

Wisconsin Supreme Court upholds Evers’ veto boosting school funding for 400 years was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.