In a challenge to the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules's ability to indefinitely block administrative rules promulgated by executive agencies, the State Democracy Research Initiative filed an amicus brief arguing that this power violates the Wisconsin Constitution by allowing an unrepresentative legislative committee make binding statewide policy decisions. In 2025, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that legislative vetoes over administrative rules violate the Wisconsin Constitution’s bicameralism and presentment requirements.
On December 20, 2024, the State Democracy Research Initiative's faculty co-directors Miriam Seifter and Rob Yablon filed an amicus brief along with six other legal scholars in Evers v. Marklein II, a case in the Wisconsin Supreme Court challenging a legislative committee's ability to veto administrative rules.
The case centered on the powers of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR). This ten-person legislative committee had the ability to indefinitely block administrative rules promulgated by executive agencies. For example, in one instance being challenged in the case, JCRAR blocked a rule banning conversion therapy for a total of more than three years.
The amicus brief filed in December 2024 argues that these powers violate the Wisconsin Constitution by enabling an unrepresentative legislative committee to make binding statewide policy decisions. It argues that concentrating such power in the hands of a few legislators flouts central democracy-promoting constitutional requirements, including bicameralism and presentment and the separation of powers. The brief also surveys other state practices, emphasizing that Wisconsin is an outlier in the breadth of veto power it gives to a legislative committee and the attendant lack of public accountability involved.
The group of legal scholars includes Richard Briffault (Columbia Law School), Steven Huefner (The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law), Ronald Levin (Washington University School of Law), Jonathan Marshfield (University of Florida Levin College of Law), Jim Rossi (Vanderbilt University Law School), and Robert F. Williams (Rutgers Law School). This group also filed an amicus brief in an earlier iteration of this case, Evers v. Marklein I, in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court concluded that the Joint Committee on Finance (JCF)’s legislative veto powers violated the Wisconsin Constitution’s separation-of-powers commitments.
On July 8, 2025, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that legislative vetoes over administrative rules violate the Wisconsin Constitution’s bicameralism and presentment requirements—i.e., that laws must pass both houses of the legislature (bicameralism) and go to the governor for approval (presentment).