Three ways the Wisconsin Supreme Court could shape your life

Wisconsinites elected Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz over former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly last spring to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a race that set spending records nearly doubling the national record.

With a 4-3 liberal majority, the Wisconsin Supreme Court could start taking up cases this fall, said Sara Benesh, associate professor and chair at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Political Science department.

Challenges to abortion rights, new political maps and voting rules could all be on the list, Benesh said. It's unclear when or if the state Supreme Court will take up these issues — the court's schedule doesn't come out until later this year.

But here are some predictions of the key issues that the state Supreme Court could possibly take up:

The decision on whether abortion is legal in Wisconsin

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its ruling legalizing abortion and Wisconsin reverted back to a 19th-century law that bans abortions in most cases. In response, Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit against Republican legislative leaders arguing the ban was unenforceable.

Arguments have already started in the lawsuit trying to invalidate the 1849 law. Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Schlipper said last month that she'd issue a ruling on a motion to dismiss the case submitted by three district attorneys Kaul previously sued.

The arguments come as majority of Wisconsinites oppose the decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to polls by Marquette Law School. It's likely the court could hear a challenge to the 19th century law this term, said Benesh, just because of the number of people it affects in the state.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court could challenge political maps that were drawn to favor republicans in 2022

Every decade, states are required to draw new maps after the U.S. census releases data. Depending on how the lines are drawn, they can give one political party a large advantage. In April 2022, the 4-3 majority of the state Supreme Court picked Republican Lawmakers' maps, which supported their control of the Legislature.

Redistricting matters to voters because the maps decide how much your vote essentially counts, said Benesh. "When you're gerrymandered into a district that you have no hope of actually influencing the outcome in, your vote no longer matters as much as it would in a system where voters are distributed more evenly."

During the campaign, Protasiewicz called the state election maps "rigged," especially against votes from people in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The state Supreme Court could hear a challenge to maps before the next presidential election, said Benesh because lawmakers want to avoid making any rule changes too close to election day.

Voting rules for the upcoming presidential election could be decided by Wisconsin's Supreme Court

The state Supreme Court could consider voting rules ahead of the upcoming 2024 presidential election. The Court could consider Racine's mobile van that travels throughout the city to meet voters in their neighborhood and collect early ballots, said Benesh.

Another issue that could be considered involves a lower count ruling in Sept. 2022 that election clerks weren't allowed to fill in missing address information on absentee ballots.

The state Supreme Court could also consider voter ID laws to change how voters can access the ballot through voter ID restrictions, said Benesh.

Here's what we don't know

The Court will release a schedule later this year. Until that schedule is released, we won't know for sure what cases the state Supreme Court will consider this fall.

Rulings from the state Supreme Court on issues like gerrymandered voting districts and various voting laws also require legal challenges that are appealed to the Supreme Court. Arguments about those issues before the state Supreme Court are likely but not yet confirmed.

Contact Alex Groth at agroth@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @grothalexandria.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Abortion, gerrymandering, voting issues and Wisconsin Supreme Court