The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto that locked in a school funding increase for the next 400 years, the justices announced Monday.

The Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center filed a lawsuit in April arguing the governor exceeded his authority. The group asked the high court to strike down the veto without waiting for the case to go through lower courts.

The court issued an order Monday afternoon saying it would take the case. The justices didn’t elaborate beyond setting a briefing schedule.

At issue is a partial veto Evers made in the state budget in July 2023 that increased revenue public schools can raise per student by $325 annually until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.

  • @njm1314
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    5 months ago

    Good Lord, I would hope so. You can’t veto just certain words in a bill and change the meaning of the bill. That’s completely undemocratic. The hell is this Governor thinking? I mean that literally, is there some kind of hidden strategy here I’m not aware of? Are they hoping to set a precedent? I can’t imagine any other reason why they would do this.

    • @Feathercrown
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      135 months ago

      This is longstanding precedent in their location and is technically allowed by law. Still dumb though, even if I do like this particular governor.

      • @wolfpack86
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        5 months ago

        What’s stopping from vetoing any bill and making it say what you want?

        Absolutely no carts in open aisles while-galloping

        Abortion is legal

        (Fucked up a few letters but point remains)

        • @Feathercrown
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          5 months ago

          You can’t strike letters to make new words, or parts of sentences to combine sentences. But striking digits and punctuation within one sentence to turn two numbers into a different number is technically neither of those. Your example would not be allowed.

    • @RizzRustbolt
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      75 months ago

      Sometimes a Governor can get a little silly, as a treat.

    • @stoly
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      15 months ago

      Lots of states have allowed this. I think most legislators probably got angry at some point and changed it.