Wisconsin Supreme Court to Decide Meagan Wolfe non-nomination on Friday

Supreme Court's WEC Ruling comes Friday

We’re going to get an answer on whether Wisconsin’s elections managers successfully side-stepped the State Senate in their bid to keep Meagan Wolfe from losing her job.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is set to issue a ruling in Wolfe’s case Friday.

The high court listened to arguments in November as to whether Wolfe is a holdover appointee, or whether the Wisconsin Elections Commission over-stepped by not reappointing her to a second term back in 2023.

Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate voted to fire Wolfe, but Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul sued. A Dane County judge ruled in Wolfe’s favor, but Republican senators appealed.

“The Circuit Court’s decision was wrong. [State law]'s text, context, and statutory purpose all mean that WEC has the mandatory duty to appoint a new Administrator for the Senate’s advice and consent once the Administrator’s term expires. That is why [the law] uses the term 'shall—as in, the 'administrator…shall be appointed by a majority of the members of the commission'—thereby imposing a mandatory duty," Republicans stated in their appeal. "The Circuit Court’s contrary conclusion would allow a partisan minority of WEC to keep in place a holdover Administrator indefinitely, without the Senate exercising its core right of advice and consent."

Wolfe has stayed-on as WEC administrator since her non-nomination in 2023.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has already ruled on holdover nominations. A conservative majority court ruled in 2022 that then-Department of Natural Resources Board member Fred Prehn could remain on the board until the State Senate approved his replacement.

But the liberal justice on that court, including three justices who will decide Wolfe’s case, argued Prehn’s holdover appointment was “absurd.”

“The majority's absurd holding allows Prehn's six-year term on the Board of Natural Resources—which expired over a year ago—to last for as long as Prehn wants it to, so long as he refuses to leave and the senate doesn't confirm a successor nominated by the governor,” Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote in her dissent in the Prehn case back in 2022. “The majority bases these nonsensical conclusions on its misguided reading of a handful of statutes and a common-law doctrine meant to avoid the "disorder and inconvenience" that would result if incumbents were unable to continue holding office after their terms expired but before a successor was in place.”

The ruling in the Wolfe case will decide more than just whether Wolfe gets to continue working at the Elections Commission. Court watchers say the liberal-majority court will decide just how much power there is behind the Wisconsin Senate’s power to advise and consent over nominations from the governor’s office.