Wisconsin Supreme Court to review challenge against Evers’ veto that increased school funding for four centuries
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will be hearing a challenge regarding Governor Tony Evers’s use of his veto powers to extend funding for K-12 public schools for the next 400 years. This case is directly presented to the state’s highest court, which currently holds a liberal majority of 4-3, overlooking the lower courts. The challenge was initiated by the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce’s Litigation Center, which argues that Governor Evers exceeded his authority with his specific application of the partial veto.
The controversy specifically stems from Governor Eers’s action where he vetoed parts of the text in the budget law concerning school funding. By striking through a hyphen and the digits “20” in the reference to the school year 2024-25, he effectively altered the duration for the allocation of an additional $325 per student per year from just two years to extending through the year 2425—a total of 402 years. The lawsuit posits that Wisconsin law prohibits such manipulation of text to create new terms through vetoes.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Gov. Tony Evers’s (D-WI) use of his veto powers, which enabled him to secure funding for K-12 public schools for the next 400 years.
The state’s high court will bypass lower courts and take up the issue directly with its new 4-3 liberal majority. In April, a Wisconsin business lobbying firm, the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce’s Litigation Center, filed a lawsuit to strike down Evers’s use of the partial veto, arguing that he exceeded authority in doing so.
The lawsuit alleged that Wisconsin law “forbids the governor from striking individual digits in an enrolled bill to create a new year.”
Last year, Evers used his partial veto powers to strike through a hyphen and “20” from a reference to the 2024-25 school year in the state’s budget. In doing so, he increased school funding by $325 per student per year for the next 402 years. Before his partial veto, the budget was set to increase school funding by $325 per student for only the next two years through 2025.
Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers used a line-item veto to change a Republican budget and increase state funding for public schools for the next 400 years.
By striking out the characters in red below, the new law adds school funding until 2425.https://t.co/TcZR5ycCfh pic.twitter.com/X4s3YGOPZU
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) July 6, 2023
“People are saying, ‘How can he do this?’” former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson said of the Evers veto. “Well, he did it.”
Wisconsin governors from both sides of the aisle have long taken advantage of the partial veto. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker used his partial veto powers to allow one state program to last indefinitely in a move known as the “thousand-year veto.”
The lawsuit against Evers asked the state’s high court to take up the issue instead of having it move through the lower courts, which the Supreme Court agreed to.
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“In no uncertain terms, 402 years is not less than or part of the two-year duration approved by the Legislature — it is far more,” WMC Litigation Center Executive Director Scott Rosenow said. “The governor overstepped his authority with this partial veto, at the expense of taxpayers, and we believe oversight by the Court is necessary.”
The group believes Evers’s use of the veto violates a constitutional amendment Wisconsin voters passed in 1990. The amendment banned the use of “Vanna White” or “pick-a-letter” vetoes, which allowed governors to delete phrases, single digits, letters, or words to create new words or sentences.
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