State Supreme Court To Take Up Reading Funds Dispute, Bypass Appeals Court

Wisconsin Supreme Court. Photo by Mariiana Tzotcheva.

A legal battle over $50 million to fund a new Wisconsin reading initiative will go directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a majority of justices on the Court has decided.

The Court on Friday accepted a petition from Gov. Tony Evers and the state Department of Public Instruction to bypass the state appeals court in a lawsuit about the funding.

The $50 million was set aside in the 2023-25 budget for the new reading program, which was authorized in a separate bill in July 2023.

The Legislature passed a follow-up measure in early 2024 described as creating “a mechanism” for the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to deploy the money. Evers signed that bill, Act 100, but with a partial veto, saying he was removing language that overly complicated how the money was spent as well as language providing per-pupil increases to private choice and independent charter schools.

The finance committee has so far declined to release the $50 million.

Republican leaders of the Legislature sued the governor, arguing that Act 100 wasn’t an appropriations law subject to the partial veto. Evers, a Democrat, countersued, charging that the finance committee was acting unlawfully in refusing to release the money.

In Dane County Circuit Court, Judge Stephen Elke issued a summary judgment Aug. 27, 2024, rejecting both lawsuits: Act 100 is an appropriations law, permitting the governor to exercise partial veto power, he ruled, while the $50 million was “properly appropriated” to the finance committee, not directly to DPI.

Attorneys for both the Evers administration and the Legislature appealed to the Wisconsin Appeals Court District 4, but Evers and DPI subsequently petitioned the Supreme Court to bypass the appeals court.

On Friday, the high court granted the petition. The Court doesn’t typically express its reasoning when accepting a bypass petition, and the authors of Friday’s order didn’t do so, either.

Justice Rebecca Bradley and Chief Justice Annette Ziegler dissented, with Bradley arguing that the Court majority’s decision to take the case was premature.

“The members of the majority sometimes enforce a rule against ‘premature petitions’ but sometimes they don’t, without disclosing any standards by which they will choose whether to apply it,” Bradley wrote. “Such arbitrariness by courts is antithetical to the original understanding of the judicial role.”

Justice Brian Hagedorn filed a separate dissent, stating, “Consistent with past practice, I would deny the petition for bypass as premature.”

State’s high court will take up reading funds dispute, bypassing appeals court was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.