Wisconsin's Supreme Court sided with county government over election-integrity advocates on Tuesday, ruling 5-2 that guardianship records used to identify voters deemed ineligible cannot be released to the public. The decision overturns a lower appellate court order and shuts down a years-long legal effort by conservative activist Ron Heuer and his Wisconsin Voter Alliance to cross-check those records against the state's voter rolls.
Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote the majority opinion, declaring that "the Alliance has no right to the records." She was joined by the court's three other liberal justices and by conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, who crossed over to form the majority. Conservative Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented.
The ruling matters because it removes one of the few mechanisms available to outside groups trying to verify whether people stripped of voting eligibility under guardianship orders have actually been removed from Wisconsin's registration list. In a state decided by fewer than 30,000 votes in each of the last two presidential elections, that kind of verification is not academic.
Heuer, a former travel executive, filed the underlying lawsuit in 2022, alleging that the number of voters found ineligible under guardianship proceedings did not match the count reflected on Wisconsin's voter registration list. He and the Wisconsin Voter Alliance filed similar suits in 13 Wisconsin counties seeking the guardianship records that would let them compare names.
Under Wisconsin law, a court can remove a person's right to vote through a guardianship order if the individual is determined unable to understand "the objective of the election process." Heuer's argument was straightforward: if those records exist, and if the voter rolls don't reflect them, someone should be able to check.
His attorney, Erick Kaardal, argued during the case that privacy concerns could be balanced with the public's right to access government records by redacting identifying or sensitive information on the forms. The majority was unpersuaded. It held that state law is clear: the records are not public.
The case reached the state's highest court after two lower appellate panels split. A Madison-based appeals court denied access to the records. But a Waukesha-based appeals court ruled in 2023 that the records should be made public and ordered Walworth County to release them with birth dates and case numbers redacted. The Supreme Court overturned that Waukesha ruling.
Ziegler and Bradley did not go quietly. Their dissent accused the majority of adopting "an overbroad and unworkable definition of what records pertain to a finding of incompetency." The dissenters drew a distinction between the guardianship case files themselves, which contain sensitive personal details, and the specific forms indicating that a person has been found ineligible to vote.
Those forms, the dissent argued, "are not pertinent to the finding of incompetency and are therefore subject to the open records law." In other words, the two conservative justices believed the majority lumped together documents that serve very different purposes, shielding even the narrow eligibility-status records behind a confidentiality wall meant for the broader guardianship file.
That distinction is not trivial. If the forms flagging voter ineligibility are genuinely separate from the medical and personal records underlying a guardianship proceeding, then the majority's blanket refusal sweeps further than necessary, exactly the kind of government opacity that open-records advocates typically challenge.
The liberal majority that now controls the Wisconsin Supreme Court has shown little interest in accommodating conservative legal arguments on election integrity. Hagedorn's decision to join them here deepened the margin and gave the ruling a bipartisan veneer, but the core reasoning came from the court's left flank.
Walworth County's attorney, Sam Hall, praised the decision, saying it "protects the privacy of vulnerable individuals while preserving their dignity." That framing carries weight. Guardianship records involve people who have been found unable to manage their own affairs, a population that deserves protection from exploitation.
But the privacy argument also has a convenient side effect: it makes it functionally impossible for anyone outside government to verify whether the voter rolls accurately reflect court-ordered changes in eligibility. Citizens are left to trust that county clerks and court administrators are keeping the lists clean, with no independent way to check.
The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, which advocates for public access to government documents, did not take a position on the case. It called the court's decision "narrowly tailored and should not have a huge impact," but added that "it's always disappointing when access to public information is curtailed."
That hedged reaction suggests even transparency advocates recognized the sensitivity of the records involved. Still, the council's mild disappointment hardly settles the question of whether the public interest in election accuracy was adequately weighed.
The AP report frames Heuer and the Wisconsin Voter Alliance as figures who "pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election." That characterization deserves scrutiny. Heuer was hired as an investigator in the post-2020 election probe led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. That probe found no evidence of fraud or abuse that would have changed the election results.
The Wisconsin Voter Alliance also filed two unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to overturn Biden's 2020 win in the state. Biden carried Wisconsin by nearly 21,000 votes, a margin that withstood independent and partisan audits, reviews, lawsuits, and recounts requested by Trump. Trump won the state in 2024 by about 29,000 votes, and no pending lawsuits challenge that outcome.
None of that history, however, answers the narrow legal question at the heart of this case: whether citizens can verify that people adjudicated ineligible to vote have actually been removed from the rolls. You don't have to believe the 2020 election was stolen to believe that question deserves an answer.
Election-integrity fights in swing states have become a recurring flashpoint. In Georgia, Republican-appointed justices recently swept Supreme Court races, underscoring how much the composition of state high courts shapes the legal terrain for election disputes.
The ruling fits a broader pattern in which Wisconsin's judiciary has become a central arena for political conflict. The state Supreme Court has recently waded into fights over redistricting, education policy, and government transparency, often splitting along ideological lines.
Conservative policy goals have faced headwinds in the state. Democrats have moved to dismantle school choice in Wisconsin, and the court itself has issued rulings that cut against conservative priorities, including striking down a race-based college scholarship program in a decision that drew attention from both sides.
Meanwhile, in other battleground states, courts have played an equally aggressive role. Arizona's attorney general has pushed forward with grand jury proceedings against Trump allies after a court rejected an original indictment, illustrating how state-level legal machinery can be wielded against conservative actors.
Kaardal, Heuer's attorney, did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling. The status of the 12 other county-level lawsuits filed by Heuer and the Wisconsin Voter Alliance remains unclear, the Supreme Court decision addressed only the Walworth County case.
Also unanswered: how many individuals in Wisconsin have had their voting rights removed under guardianship orders, and whether any mechanism now exists for the public to verify that those removals are reflected on the voter rolls. The court's ruling effectively places that verification entirely in the hands of government officials, with no outside check.
That is the real cost of Tuesday's decision. The court may be right that state law shields these records. The dissent may be right that the majority drew the line too broadly. But either way, voters in one of America's tightest swing states are now told to simply trust that the system works, and forbidden from looking for themselves.
In a democracy, "trust us" is not a transparency policy. It is the absence of one.
