Wisconsin judge knocks Legislature off disabled voter lawsuit

MADISON, Wis. (CN) — A Wisconsin judge denied the Legislature’s motion to intervene in a lawsuit challenging statewide voting laws that disenfranchise some disabled voters on Monday evening after four months of deliberating.

The underlying lawsuit was filed in April 2024 by Disability Rights Wisconsin, a local chapter of the League of Women Voters, and four disabled voters who are suing over the current voting scheme that prevents visually impaired voters from receiving and marking ballots electronically.

This, they say in a 57-page complaint, disenfranchises disabled voters who can’t cast their ballot without the help of another person. Wisconsin law only allows military voters and those who are overseas permanently to receive an electronic ballot via an online portal or email.

While the parties prepare for trial next year, Republican lawmakers and Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul clashed once again over the question of whether the Legislature has the right to intervene in challenges to state law.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell allowed the Legislature permissive intervention — which is when the court uses its discretion to allow a third party with similar interest in the outcome of a lawsuit to become a party — alongside the attorney general’s office representing the elections commission.

Kaul appealed the intervention order, which the appeals court overturned and remanded to the lower court with instructions to provide clearer reasoning on the issue.

Mitchell reversed course on the question in a long-awaited order that hit the docket Monday evening, handing a victory to Kaul and reasoning this time that the Legislature’s intervention would impede on the attorney general’s power to enforce election law.

The Legislature has the “exact same interest” as the defendant in the case, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, according to Mitchell. While the statute technically allows for their intervention, the law is overly broad and cannot apply to the facts of this case.

“This case is about how the executive executes Wisconsin’s election code; our constitutional system of shared powers affords the Legislature no institutional interest of its own in how the executive does so,” Mitchell said in his15-page decision.

He goes on to accuse the Legislature of “simply guessing” that counsel for the election commission and the Wisconsin DOJ might exercise bad judgment but says it does not logically follow that they would add anything meaningful to the litigation.

The court heard oral arguments on the intervention issue in October 2025 after the appeals court reversed Mitchell’s initial approval.

Misha Tseytlin, a Chicago-based attorney and former Wisconsin solicitor general who frequently represents the Legislature, argued then that lawmakers should have a say because the constitutionality of a policy they wrote is being challenged.

Assistant Attorney General Charlotte Gibson countered that intervention would violate the separation of powers since the executive branch has the exclusive right to execute the law, which includes defending its validity in court.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision in Kaul v. Wisconsin State Legislature is controlling here  — the justices found the Legislature does not have a legitimate constitutional interest in a handful of specific categories.

Although that case was primarily focused on settlements, it also covered civil enforcement actions brought under statutes that the attorney general is tasked with enforcing such as consumer and voting regulations.

Mitchell agreed with Gibson and the justices here, finding that executing elections statutes like those at play in this case are straightforward executive powers that the Legislature cannot trample.

Tseytlin also asked Mitchell to imagine a scenario where the Legislature is not allowed to intervene on a case like the underlying one here, and the attorney general’s office chooses not to defend the law.

Mitchell, not caring to imagine, clarified for the record that the state intends to litigate the underlying lawsuit fully and wrote in Monday’s decision that the Legislature’s inadequate representation argument would create an infinite loop of litigation decisions.

“If individual strategy decisions taken in pursuit of a common goal must be scrutinized, as the Legislature contends, then must the circuit court consider even comically mundane strategy decisions like the choice of font in a legal brief?”

The plaintiffs won a temporary injunction in June 2024 requiring the commission to issue absentee ballots electronically for the November 2024 election to certain disabled voters.

On appeal, Judge Mark Gundrum overturned the injunction in March 2025 and scolded the lower court for disrupting the status quo with an improper injunction order. The merits of the case are slated for trial in July.

The parties could not be reached for comment by press time.

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