Supreme Court upholds Evers’ veto to boost school funding

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that Gov. Tony Evers was within his rights when he used his partial veto authority to expand a budget funding provision from two years to 402 years by striking words and digits from the budget.

The ruling affirms the governor’s partial veto power. Wisconsin is the only state where governors can partially veto spending bills by striking words, numbers and punctuation to create new meaning or spending amounts.

In 2023, Evers used his partial veto power to strike digits and a hyphen in a state budget line to extend a $325 per-pupil funding increase to 2425. Originally, Republican lawmakers sought to have the funding increase to end in 2025. Evers said he made the move to provide school districts with predictable increases for the “foreseeable future.”

The decision was 4-3. Writing for the liberal majority, Justice Jill Karofsky was joined by Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet and Janet Protasiewicz. Justice Brian Hagedorn filed a dissenting opinion and was joined by Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Grassl Bradley.

Karofsky wrote the state constitution allows the governor to strike digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than one approved by the Legislature. She said the 400-year modification was significant but within Evers’ rights. Karofsky noted Evers did not write in change; he only deleted digits and a hyphen.

“However, our constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable,” Karofsky wrote.

In his dissent, Hagedorn wrote that allowing a governor to write a new law using his partial veto “cannot be justified under any reasonable reading of the Wisconsin Constitution.”

“One might scoff at the silliness of it all, but it is no laughing matter,” he said, adding this “fantastical state of affairs did not appear at once,” but is the result of governors pushing the boundaries of their partial veto powers and the court largely agreeing with them.

The lawsuit was filed by two Wisconsin taxpayers. They argued Evers’ veto was barred under a 1990 constitutional amendment adopted by voters that removed the governor’s ability to strike individual letters to make new words. Allowing governors to change numbers would give them unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, they said.

Karofsky wrote that rule outlined in the amendment only applied to letters, not digits so Evers could strike numbers to create a new number.

“In short, the plain language of the constitutional text permits striking numbers written out with digits,” she said.

Karofsky in her opinion suggested the Legislature could change the governor’s veto powers through a constitutional amendment. Republicans have already introduced an amendment to limit the governor’s veto power.