Blog

Select Category

State Threatens School Counselor’s License After She Denounced Gender Ideology at Public Rally

WILL issued letter to DPI warning their actions to revoke license violate First Amendment The News: Attorneys at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & ...

RICE V. MILW. COUNTY BOARD

The Milwaukee County Board took up decennial redistricting at a public meeting without putting it on the agenda. In our first case (and our first victory) we obtained a declaration that they violated the Open Meetings Law in doing so.

BALDWIN-WOODVILLE SCH. DIST.

The Baldwin-Woodville School District’s Board of Education went into closed session and voted to pay Christmas bonuses (essentially in lieu of pension and insurance payments the district could no longer make under Act 10). We filed an open meetings complaint with the Attorney General pointing out that the meeting was illegal, and he agreed.

NCTQ V. UW BD. OF REGENTS

The University of Wisconsin refused to turn over course syllabi and other documents in response to a records request. We filed a lawsuit, and obtained a settlement in which our clients were able to obtain everything they needed for their research into university education programs.

MACIVER V. ERPENBACH

State Senator Jon Erpenbach redacted the names of hundreds of people who contacted him regarding Act 10 from emails he produced in response to a records request. We sued and obtained a published decision from the Wisconsin Court of Appeals requiring him to release the names of public employees who wrote him.

LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS V. WALKER

This challenge to the voter ID law argued that the presentation of an ID was an “additional qualification” to vote not permitted by the Wisconsin Constitution. In amicus briefs, WILL argued that it was not an additional qualification, but rather a method of establishing that a voter meets the existing qualifications. The court of appeals and supreme court agreed, upholding the law.

NAACP V. WALKER

This challenge to the voter ID law argued that it denied minorities the right to vote, because they were less likely to have an ID. We filed amicus briefs justifying the law by showing that voter fraud exists in Wisconsin and can swing local elections that are sometimes decided by single-digit margins. The supreme court upheld the law.

RICE V. MILW. CO. BD. 2013

The Milwaukee County Board voted in closed session to authorize collective bargaining (illegally, under Act 10), and travelled to Madison en masse to speak at a legislative hearing on a bill affecting the Board’s authority. We sued, arguing that both incidents violated the Open Meetings Law, but the judge disagreed.