Wisconsin Supreme Court Allows Top Election Official to Keep Job Amid GOP Effort to Oust Her
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state’s top election official, Meagan Wolfe, can remain in her role as a holdover after her term, rejecting state Senate Republicans’ attempts to oust her.
In a rare unanimous decision for the divided court, which currently has a 4-3 liberal majority, the justices upheld a lower court decision rejecting the GOP’s request to order the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) — the state’s bipartisan election regulatory agency — to appoint a new administrator.
Wolfe has served in the role since she was appointed by WEC and confirmed by the state Senate in 2019. Despite supporting her for the job in 2019, Republican legislators called for her removal in 2021 and repeatedly after that, pedaling unfounded and debunked election conspiracies related to the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Wolfe’s four-year term was set to expire in July 2023, and the month before that, the six WEC commissioners held a vote to reappoint her. However, it ended in a partisan deadlock as the three Republicans voted to reappoint her, and the three Democrats abstained from the vote.
This is because the state Senate needs to confirm WEC’s appointee for administrator, and the Democrats were concerned GOP legislators would reject her appointment, effectively firing her. Despite WEC commissioners not voting to reappoint her, the state Senate voted on her appointment anyway, rejecting her along party lines in September 2023.
Since WEC didn’t successfully vote to fill the administration role after Wolfe’s term ended, her tenure automatically rolled over as permitted by state statute.
That same month, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) filed a lawsuit on behalf of Wolfe and WEC challenging Senate Republicans’ vote to remove her.
Kaul argued while the “Senate has the power to consent to or reject the appointment of an administrator by the Commission,” it has “no power to act on an appointment where there is no pending appointment.”
He asked the Dane County Circuit Court to rule that Wolfe is lawfully holding over in her current position and to declare that the state Senate lacks the power to reject her.
He also invoked a 2022 ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which stated a holdover appointee can remain in office “after their term expires” and that the expiration of their term “does not create a vacancy” in the position.
During proceedings in the case, the legislators conceded that Wolfe is lawfully holding over as the administrator of WEC and the Senate “cannot reject an appointment when there is no appointment pending.”
They presented a different argument instead, claiming that state law “imposes a duty on WEC to appoint a new administrator at the end of an administrator’s term—regardless of whether a vacancy in the position exists.”
The court ruled in favor of Wolfe and WEC in January 2024, and GOP state legislators appealed the decision to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The state’s highest court then upheld the lower court’s decision Friday, ruling “WEC does not have a duty to appoint a new administrator to replace Wolfe simply because her term has ended.”