The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an attempt by a conservative activist to obtain guardianship records in an effort to find ineligible voters in the presidential battleground state.

Background of the Case

The case has been winding its way through the courts for years and stems from attempts by conservatives to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin over President Donald Trump in 2020. A conservative activist, Ron Heuer, and a group he leads, the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, brought the lawsuit in 2022 alleging that the number of ineligible voters doesn’t match the count on Wisconsin’s voter registration list.

In Wisconsin, a guardianship order is granted by a court giving a person certain legal rights over another who is determined to be unable to make decisions about their life. A court has the power to remove the right to vote from a person under a guardianship order if the person is determined to be unable to understand “the objective of the election process.”

Ruling and Implications

Heuer asked the state Supreme Court to rule that counties must release records filed when a judge determines that someone isn’t competent to vote so that those names can be compared to the voter registration list. However, the court ruled that the records are not public, citing state law that the records being sought are not public and “the Alliance has no right to the records.”

The decision was made by the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority along with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, resulting in a 5-2 ruling. Conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented, arguing that the court adopted “an overbroad and unworkable definition of what records pertain to a finding of incompetency” to include the forms that indicate a person has been found ineligible to vote.

Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.