The ruling blocks an attempt to compare guardianship files with voter rolls in a key battleground state. It also clarifies how far public-records claims can go when vulnerable residents’ private court records are at stake.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has put a hard stop on one of the more invasive records fights to grow out of the post-2020 election wars.
In a 5-2 decision, the court rejected a conservative activist’s attempt to obtain guardianship records that could be used to check whether people deemed legally incompetent to vote remained on Wisconsin’s voter rolls, according to reports from The Associated Press and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
A privacy line in Wisconsin
The case centered on records filed when a judge determines that someone under guardianship is not competent to vote. Those records can include deeply personal information about people who already sit in one of the most sensitive corners of the court system.
Former travel executive Ron Heuer and the Wisconsin Voter Alliance sought access to those records as part of an effort to identify potentially ineligible voters. The group alleged that Wisconsin’s count of ineligible voters did not match its voter registration list, though the lawsuit did not specify how many people might be affected, according to the AP account carried by WKOW.
The court’s majority said the records are not public under state law. Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote for the majority that “the Alliance has no right to the records,” according to the AP report.
That finding matters because the case was not simply about whether voter rolls should be accurate. It was about whether a private group could use Wisconsin’s public-records laws to reach into sealed or confidential guardianship materials in the name of election policing.
The records activists wanted
Guardianship orders are issued when a court gives one person certain legal authority over another person who is found unable to make some decisions independently. In Wisconsin, a judge can also remove a person’s right to vote if the person is determined to be unable to understand “the objective of the election process.”
Heuer’s side wanted counties to release forms connected to those voting-competency determinations. The purpose was to compare names against the statewide voter registration list and look for people who should not be registered.
His attorney, Erick Kaardal, argued that privacy concerns could be addressed by redacting identifying or sensitive details from the documents. That argument ran into a practical problem raised by Walworth County: a cross-check against voter rolls cannot work without names and addresses.
Attorney Sam Hall, representing Walworth County, argued during the case that the requested comparison would require disclosing the very identifying information the challengers said could be protected. After the ruling, Hall praised the decision as one that “protects the privacy of vulnerable individuals while preserving their dignity,” according to the AP report.
Why the court split mattered
The decision was not a straight party-line ideological ruling. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has a liberal majority, and the majority in this case included the court’s liberal justices along with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, according to the AP.
Two conservative justices dissented. The 5-2 outcome gives the ruling added weight because it signals that at least one conservative justice agreed the records request went beyond what Wisconsin law allows.
The case had reached the high court after lower appellate courts split on the issue. One appeals court based in Madison denied access to the records. Another appeals court based in Waukesha ruled in 2023 that the records should be made public, with birth dates and case numbers redacted.
The Supreme Court overturned the Waukesha-based appellate ruling. The result is a clearer statewide rule, at least for this category of guardianship-related voter competency records.
Election integrity meets guardianship privacy
The political context is impossible to miss. The case stems from the years of litigation, audits and records demands that followed Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Donald Trump in Wisconsin, a state decided by a narrow margin and repeatedly targeted by election-fraud claims.
Heuer and the Wisconsin Voter Alliance have challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 election, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Their guardianship-records lawsuit was one piece of a broader push by some conservative activists to examine election systems through court filings and public-records requests.
Accurate voter rolls are a legitimate public interest. States routinely remove voters who die, move, become ineligible or are otherwise no longer properly registered. But the Wisconsin case asked whether that interest could override privacy protections attached to people under guardianship.
The court’s answer was no. Its ruling does not say Wisconsin may ignore ineligible voters. It says this particular set of private records cannot be turned over to this private group for that purpose.
Open records advocates see limits
The ruling also lands in a tricky place for open-government advocates. Public-records laws are designed to let citizens scrutinize government decisions, including decisions about elections. But those laws often contain exceptions for medical, juvenile, court and personal privacy records.
The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, which supports public access to documents but did not take a position on this case, described the ruling as “narrowly tailored” and said it should not have a huge impact, according to the AP account. The group also said it is “always disappointing when access to public information is curtailed.”
That tension is the heart of the case. Open records can expose wrongdoing, bureaucratic mistakes and gaps in election administration. But the same tools can also expose personal details about people who never asked to become part of a political fight.
By focusing on the specific guardianship records at issue, the court avoided a sweeping statement against election-related records requests. The decision appears aimed at one narrow category: documents tied to determinations about a person’s legal capacity to vote.
What this changes now
For counties, the decision removes the immediate pressure to release guardianship voting-competency records in response to similar requests. It also gives local officials a stronger legal basis for denying access when the request would identify people under guardianship who have lost voting rights.
For activists, the ruling narrows one path for outside voter-roll investigations. It does not prevent challenges to voter eligibility through other legal channels, nor does it stop election officials from maintaining voter lists under existing state and federal rules.
For voters and families affected by guardianship, the ruling is more direct: private court records tied to competency and voting rights will not be opened for this kind of outside review.
Kaardal did not immediately return an email seeking comment, according to the AP report. That leaves open whether Heuer or the Wisconsin Voter Alliance will try another legal route. For now, Wisconsin’s top court has made clear that the search for ineligible voters has a boundary when it reaches into guardianship files.
Leave a Reply