In last week’s Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate debate, Wisconsin Justice Initiative’s legal challenge to the spring 2020 ballot question underlay one of the final questions.
WISN 12 in Milwaukee held and broadcast the debate between Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judges Chris Taylor and Maria Lazar on Thursday, Apr. 2.
About 10 minutes before the end, WISN moderator Matt Smith asked Taylor why she had voted against the constitutional amendment known as Marsy’s Law when she was a state legislator. Taylor served in the Wisconsin Assembly prior to appointment as a circuit court judge in 2020.
After Taylor’s answer, discussing her constituents’ concerns with the provision, Smith turned to Lazar. He asked her about Marsy’s Law as follows:
“Judge Lazar, critics have challenged the wording on the ballot as unclear and insufficient. The court, though, in a six to one ruling, disagreed with that. It has led to some questions, including new debates, about what information should be made public and when. Are there negative, unintended consequences to Marsy’s Law?”
Lazar first answered that the amendment “is a very good, strong law,” but admitted that “there are some issues that have come up” for the courts to decide.
“I think there are some points that will have to be addressed, but overall it has been astonishingly effective and important,” she said.
She attributed issues with the amendment to the drafters not knowing all the possible perspectives or effects. “It’s not like we have lawyers in our Legislature drafting most of these bills,” she said.
Though Smith did not name WJI or mention the caption of the court decision, his question referenced the lawsuit WJI brought in 2019 to challenge the Marsy’s Law ballot question. WJI argued that the ballot question not only failed to fully and fairly inform voters about the contents of the amendment but, in fact, misled them.
WJI argued that the ballot question failed to inform voters of the amendment’s reduction of rights of an accused. An accused’s right to a fair trial, for instance, was deleted from the constitution.
The Supreme Court in 2023 ruled against WJI, six to one, on a ground that had not been raised by the state defendants and that two justices sprung on the parties at oral argument.
The decision gave the Legislature broad freedom to describe proposed amendments, regardless of voters being confused or misled by the ballot questions. Voters are not entitled to a fair explanation of what they are voting on.
Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote for the majority that the Wisconsin Constitution “does not require any substantive discussion of the amendment in the ballot question submitted to the people. No explanation or summary is constitutionally commanded.” A ballot question is deficient “only in the rare circumstance that the question is fundamentally counterfactual such that voters were not asked to approve the actual amendment,” he wrote.
Justice Rebecca Bradley concurred, saying that “(t)he constitutional purpose of a ballot question . . . is not to educate voters.”
“Voters are trusted to inform themselves,” she wrote.
A recent bill, AB 207, would have provided voters with significantly more information. Introduced by Republicans, it ended up with bipartisan support in the Assembly, where it passed out of committee with a unanimous vote in October 2025 and then passed the full Assembly in November.
The bill would have required the Legislature to draft a one-page disclosure notice for voters with the entire text of the actual proposed constitutional amendment (not just the ballot question), a plain language summary of existing law, and a plain language explanation of the effect of the proposed amendment. The disclosure notice would be pusblished on the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s voter registration website for at least 30 days before an election, posted on each county clerk’s website, mailed with absentee ballots, and posted at the polls on election day.
Sponsor Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond du Lac) stated in written testimony in both chambers that “(n)o one likes to be at a disadvantage when asked to take a position on a crucial matter such as amending the state Constitution. Yet that is how we treat our voters when we present the voters with a referendum question on a ballot. This is unfair and unreasonable. We can and should do better.”
Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) stated in written testimony urging passage, “Ballot questions are not written to explain a proposal, they’re written to implement it.” He noted that the bill “strengthens voter trust through transparency and accuracy.”
The Senate received the Assembly’s approved bill in November. However, the bill did not progress through the Senate’s Committee on Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs. The bill died when the Legislature adjourned in March 2026.
The Senate’s version of the bill, SB 205, received a hearing in that same committee in November 2025, but the committee failed to vote on it.
As for Lazar’s statement that the Legislature does not have lawyers drafting bills, in the case of the Marsy’s Law constitutional amendment, it might not have been drafted by people in Wisconsin at all.
Marsy’s Law has been the personal cause of Broadcom founder, billionaire, and later convicted drug felon Henry Nicholas III, following the tragic murder of his sister. Beginning with a Marsy’s Law constitutional amendment in California in 2008, he and his organizations have advocated for substantially similar amendments in at least 20 states.
Marsy’s Law for Wisconsin, LLC spent over $1.5 million from January 2017 through June 2019 lobbying the Legislature to approve the amendment and ballot question so the matter could be sent to voters in spring 2020.
