Wisconsin Supreme Court Now Has Largest Liberal Majority in Decades—Just in Time for 2028

Wisconsin voters delivered a decisive message on Tuesday: they're not letting Republicans rig the rules of democracy in one of America's most critical swing states.

Chris Taylor, a former Democratic state lawmaker and current appeals court judge, crushed her conservative opponent Maria Lazar by double digits. The Associated Press called the race less than 40 minutes after polls closed. Taylor's win expands the Wisconsin Supreme Court's liberal majority from 4-3 to 5-2—the largest progressive margin the court has seen since at least the 1970s.

More importantly, this locks in liberal control through the 2028 presidential election, even if conservatives win both of the next two supreme court races scheduled before then. That firewall matters enormously in a state where Republicans have spent years trying to manipulate election rules and gerrymander their way to permanent power.

A Court That Actually Defends Voting Rights

Since liberals flipped the Wisconsin Supreme Court majority in 2023, the court has been dismantling Republican efforts to suppress votes and entrench minority rule. The justices struck down a GOP legislative gerrymander that had kept Democrats locked out of power for over a decade, forcing new and fairer maps. They restored ballot dropboxes after Republicans tried to eliminate them. They threw out Wisconsin's 19th-century abortion ban.

Taylor herself has a track record on voting access. As an appeals court judge, she issued a ruling that made it easier for voters to cast mail ballots—exactly the kind of decision that drives Republicans apoplectic.

"We cannot be fatigued when it comes to democracy," Taylor told Bolts in February. "It's just something we have to keep working on."

She'll get plenty of opportunities. Wisconsin's congressional map remains heavily gerrymandered in Republicans' favor, and the court may soon be asked to address that. More lawsuits are virtually guaranteed during the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential race, just as the court faced a barrage of cases in 2020 when Trump and his allies tried to overturn Wisconsin's election results.

The MAGA Money Stayed Home This Time

This race looked nothing like last year's Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which shattered spending records with over $100 million pouring in—much of it from Elon Musk, who tried and failed to help conservatives flip the court back.

This year, with the liberal majority not on the line, the big-money donors mostly sat out. Taylor and Lazar were competing for a seat being vacated by retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. A Lazar win would have only maintained the GOP's current three-seat minority, so the usual suspects didn't bother opening their checkbooks.

TV ad spending totaled just $4 million this year, compared to over $75 million in 2025, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Taylor's campaign still dramatically outspent Lazar's—roughly nine times more on TV ads—but the overall spending was a fraction of recent races.

"This year's Wisconsin Supreme Court election looks like a supreme court election from another era—which is to say, a decade ago," said Douglas Keith of the Brennan Center, who tracks state courts nationwide.

Don't mistake the lower spending for a return to quieter times, Keith warned. The particular dynamics of this race—a liberal seat being replaced, no majority at stake—made it less of a target. When control is on the line again, expect the money to flood back in.

Abortion Rights and Anti-Trans Fear-Mongering

Taylor ran heavily on abortion rights, touting her work for Planned Parenthood and the court's 4-3 decision last year striking down Wisconsin's abortion ban. That's become standard playbook for liberal judicial candidates since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

According to Keith, just 3 percent of state supreme court ads mentioned abortion in 2020, before the Dobbs decision. Since 2022, 30 percent of all state supreme court ads have mentioned abortion—and every single one has defended abortion access, not restricted it.

Lazar, who defended abortion restrictions as a deputy attorney general, didn't highlight that record in her campaign. Instead, she ran ads demonizing transgender people as threats to the "safety and dreams" of children and echoing Republican talking points about election fraud.

One Lazar ad accused Taylor of "pushing for noncitizen voting and weakening voter ID"—standard MAGA fear-mongering with no basis in reality.

A Long History of Election Denial

Lazar has deep ties to the election denial movement. In her 2022 Court of Appeals campaign, she was endorsed by conservatives directly involved in Trump's effort to overturn Wisconsin's 2020 results. That includes a fake elector who tried to cast an electoral vote for Trump despite his loss in Wisconsin, and a former state supreme court justice who led a widely discredited investigation recommending the state decertify its 2020 election.

Trump continues spreading the same lies today, and Wisconsin Republicans are still pushing legislation to restrict voting access—backed by Senator Ron Johnson, one of the most shameless election deniers in Congress.

Taylor's victory ensures those efforts will face a hostile reception in Wisconsin's highest court for years to come. Her 10-year term runs until 2036, coinciding with the next round of redistricting in the early 2030s.

Democrats are hoping to take control of Wisconsin's state legislature this fall for the first time in 16 years, thanks to the new court-ordered maps that replaced the Republican gerrymander. If they succeed, it will mark a dramatic power shift in a state that's been under GOP stranglehold despite consistently electing Democrats statewide.

Turnout was dramatically lower than last year's record-breaking race, which is unsurprising given the lower stakes. But the result was identical: the liberal candidate scored an easy win, marking the fourth consecutive Wisconsin Supreme Court election where progressives prevailed.

Republicans can keep trying to manipulate the rules. Wisconsin voters keep rejecting them.