MADISON, Wis. (CN) - The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state's governor in a dispute over whether the Legislature can block rules enacted by the state's executive agencies.

The case represents an ongoing feud between Democratic Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and the state's Republican-controlled Legislature.

Evers sued the Legislature in 2023 over a handful of statutes granting various legislative committees veto power over a number of expenditures and rules by the state Department of Natural Resources, Department of Safety and Professional Services and the University of Wisconsin.

Republican majorities in the state House and Senate have used that power to block several executive actions, including the acquisition of land by the DNR and pay raises for public university employees.

Speaker Robin Vos said at the time that he planned to hold up statutory pay raises for about 35,500 University of Wisconsin System employees until the university either cuts its positions dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion or gives up its authority to create new positions altogether.

Evers, joined by the administrative departments affected by the vetoes, filed suit in October 2023 against a group of legislators, including Vos.

In 2024, the court ruled 6-1 in Evers' favor, stating that the statute blocking the governor from spending funds that the Legislature had previously approved was unconstitutional.

"Maintaining the separation of powers between the branches is essential for the preservation of liberty and a government accountable to the people. By placing the power of the executive branch to carry out the law in a committee of the Legislature, the legislative branch subsumed the executive power," Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley wrote for the majority.

The court also heard arguments in a May 2025 appeal after the Legislature took a second shot at trying to usurp the governor's power by giving the state Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rule, known as JCRAR, veto power over executive branch rules.

The committee used its new veto power to block a rule that allowed the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services to update commercial building standards while also blocking an update to professional ethics standards for therapists and social workers, which regarded "conversion therapy" techniques as unethical.

The committee called the therapy veto temporary, but the Legislature failed to pass a bill to support it.

Evers argued in his brief before the court that the committee has effectively taken over the Legislature's right to pass a bill, which then must be sent to the governor for approval.

The committee also intrudes on the executive branch's authority, added Evers' counsel, Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Charlotte Gibson, highlighting that if the Legislature previously granted his office rulemaking authority for one of the executive's agencies, that agency then has the power to carry out the Legislature's wishes.

"Even if rulemaking were instead viewed as a shared power, the Legislature still cannot act through a committee outside its lawmaking function, and it cannot block the executive branch from acting. That is exactly what JCRAR's vetoes do," Gibson wrote.

In response, Republican legislatures claim that Evers is asking the court to "upend retroactively decades of the Legislature's broad delegation of legislative rulemaking authority to administrative agencies."

Legislatures relied on the court's previous ruling in a 2020 case, which found that when an agency makes a rule, it's exercising legislative power and therefore subordinate to the Legislature.

In that case, the court applied a 1992 ruling, Martinez v. DILHR, finding that JCRAR's suspension power is delegated to it by legislative standards.

"It would be a grave affront to the separation of powers and interbranch comity for this court now to overturn Martinez and invalidate the crucial JCRAR oversight upon which the Legislature relied, while otherwise leaving those delegations of legislative power to administrative agencies in place," wrote the Legislature's counsel, Mishae Tseytlin, of Troutman Pepper.

Source: Courthouse News Service