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Last month, the California Supreme Court rebuked a local sheriff’s unprecedented seizure of roughly 650,000 ballots cast in the state’s November 2025 special election. The decisions, Bonta v. Bianco and Cervantes v. Bianco, both held that the sheriff had to follow the state attorney general’s directions to pause his investigation and that the seizure violated the state’s laws for securely handling and storing cast ballots. The court also ordered the ballots returned to local election officials.

In the upcoming November 2026 election, Wisconsin voters will be asked to vote on whether the Wisconsin Constitution should be amended to add a section to the Wisconsin Declaration of Rights, prohibiting the government from operating programs that discriminate against or give preference to individuals on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, or national origin. The authors of the proposed amendment describe it as restricting diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) programs.

In the upcoming November 2026 election, Wisconsin voters will be asked whether to amend Article I, Section 18, of the Wisconsin Constitution, which protects religious freedom and bars religious preferences. The proposed amendment would expressly prohibit the government from closing or forbidding gatherings in places of worship in response to an emergency. Legislators were motivated to introduce this amendment in response to restrictions placed on churches and other places of worship during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

In the upcoming November 2026 election, Wisconsin voters will be asked whether to amend Article V, Section 10(1)(c), of the Wisconsin Constitution to ban the governor's use of the partial veto power to increase or allow the increase of taxes or fees. Legislators introduced the partial veto amendment in response to Governor Tony Evers’s “400-year veto,” which struck words, digits, and dashes to allow localities to raise increased school funding through the 2425 school year, instead of just through 2025. 

In the upcoming November 2026 election, Wisconsin voters will be asked to vote on three proposed amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution. These amendments will be on the ballot alongside a contentious race for governor, state legislative races that will determine control of the state legislature, and at least one closely watched federal House race that may decide which party controls the House after the midterms, among others. In a series of explainers, we describe the proposed amendments, their backgrounds, the national context, the arguments for and against the amendments, and the likely impacts.

This essay is part of a 50-state series about the nation’s constitutions. We’ve asked an expert from each state to dive into their constitution, narrate its history, identify its quirks, and summarize its most essential components for our readers. In 1848, voters in the Wisconsin Territory ratified the Wisconsin Constitution that is still in use today. This founding document, amended more than 150 times, reflects the work of generations of legislators, advocates, and voters on topics from democracy to finance to individual rights.

From Portland to Minneapolis, aggressive actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents against citizens and noncitizens alike have been well documented. Many of these encounters raise grave constitutional concerns. Yet it may surprise—and alarm—many to learn that there is often no viable path to sue federal officers if they violate your constitutional rights, even egregiously.

State legislatures regularly propose and enact laws that seek to shape the substantive outcomes of state courts. These measures, including court-packing efforts, jurisdiction-stripping laws, and more creative maneuvers to change judicial selection or authority, would amount to legal earthquakes at the federal level. At the state level, these efforts often receive virtually no attention. This Essay brings the potent category of outcome-shaping court reform measures into focus and evaluates it as a question of state constitutional law.

Amid federal upheaval, myriad important legal and policy developments continue to unfold at the state level. The Essays in this Special Issue were presented at, or grew out of, the fifth annual Public Law in the States Conference hosted by the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School in May 2025.

Developed by two of the subject’s leading experts, the First Edition of State Constitutional Law: Cases and Principles provides a contemporary, authoritative treatment of the field, complete with majority approaches and alternatives across the country. The book provides detailed treatments of the wide range of state constitutional issues—not only rights, but also government structure, democracy, fiscal provisions, and intrastate relations.