appeal court

MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an attempt by a conservative activist to obtain guardianship records in an effort to find ineligible voters in the presidential battleground state.

The case has been wending its way through the courts for years and stems from attempts by conservatives to overturn President Biden’s victory in Wisconsin over President Trump in 2020.

Here’s what to know:

A conservative activist brought the case

The case tested the line between protecting personal privacy rights and ensuring that ineligible people can’t vote.

Former travel executive Ron Heuer and a group he leads, the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, brought the lawsuit in 2022 alleging that the number of ineligible voters doesn’t match the count on Wisconsin’s voter registration list. The lawsuit doesn’t specify how many people could be affected.

In Wisconsin, a guardianship order is granted by a court giving a person certain legal rights over another who is determined to be unable to make decisions about their life. A court has the power to remove the right to vote from a person under a guardianship order if the person is determined to be unable to understand “the objective of the election process.”

Heuer asked the state Supreme Court to rule that counties must release records filed when a judge determines that someone isn’t competent to vote so that those names can be compared to the voter registration list.

Heuer’s attorney, Erick Kaardal, argued that privacy concerns could be balanced with the public’s right to access government records by redacting identifying or sensitive information on the forms.

But the attorney for Walworth County said those seeking access to the records wanted to cross-check ineligible voters against the names of those registered. They can’t do that, attorney Sam Hall said during oral arguments, without releasing the person’s name and address.

Hall praised the ruling, saying it “protects the privacy of vulnerable individuals while preserving their dignity.”

Kaardal did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, which advocates for public access to documents but did not take a position on this case, said the court’s decision was “narrowly tailored and should not have a huge impact.”

The council praised the court for clarifying the standard for deciding similar cases in the future, but that “it’s always disappointing when access to public information is curtailed.”

Signs supporting Judge Susan Crawford, and voting and election officials adorn the front yard of a home on South 16th Street on election day April 1, 2025, in Milwaukee.

(Kayla Wolf / Associated Press)

Liberal justices who control Wisconsin Supreme Court reject the case

In the 5-2 ruling on Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority along with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn ruled that the records are not public as the conservative activist had claimed.

The court took the case after two lower state appeals courts issued divergent rulings. One appeals court, based in Madison, denied access to the records while another appeals court, based in Waukesha, said in 2023 that the records should be made public.

It ordered Walworth County to release them with birth dates and case numbers redacted.

The Supreme Court overturned the appeals court ruling that the records should be made public.

State law is clear that the records being sought are not public and “the Alliance has no right to the records,” Justice Janet Protasiewicz wrote for the majority.

Conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley dissented, saying the court adopted “an overbroad and unworkable definition of what records pertain to a finding of incompetency” to include the forms that indicate a person has been found ineligible to vote.

Those forms are not pertinent to the finding of incompetency and are therefore subject to the open records law, Ziegler and Bradley wrote.

The case was one of several targeting the 2020 election

The case was an attempt by those who questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential race to cast doubt on the integrity of elections in the presidential swing state. Heuer and the WVA filed lawsuits in 13 Wisconsin counties in 2022 seeking guardianship records.

Heuer and the WVA have pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in a failed attempt to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin. Heuer was hired as an investigator in the discredited 2020 election probe led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. The probe found no evidence of fraud or abuse that would have changed the election results.

The WVA also filed two unsuccessful lawsuits that sought to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin.

Trump won Wisconsin in 2024 after losing in 2020

Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and the recounts Trump requested. Trump won Wisconsin in 2024 by about 29,000 votes.

There are no pending lawsuits challenging the results of the 2024 election or calls to investigate the outcome.

Bauer writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused Monday to block an excessive force lawsuit against a former Los Angeles Police Department officer who shot and killed a knife-wielding man whose speeding truck had slammed into several cars near downtown Los Angeles.

The court turned down an appeal petition from the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, over the objections of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Litigation over the six-second shooting incident has extended over six years.

Federal judges in California agreed that Officer Toni McBride had reason to fire four shots at the suspect in April 2020 but not the two final shots that killed him.

Daniel Hernandez was alleged to be under the influence of methamphetamine when he got out of his truck and walked toward the officer. She repeatedly ordered him, “Drop the knife,” as he approached.

But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 6-5 vote, ruled last year that a jury could decide the officer went too far when she fired two final shots after the suspect had fallen to the ground.

The majority reasoned that in the one-second pause between shots four and five, McBride “could have and should first reassessed the situation” and possibly concluded the suspect no longer posed a danger.

That ruling would have sent the case to a trial.

But the Los Angeles city’s attorney’s office appealed to the Supreme Court in October and urged the justices to review and reverse the 9th Circuit’s decision.

The city’s attorneys said the appeals court failed to consider the “totality of circumstances from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene” and its decision refused “to allow for reasonable mistakes in fast-moving, life-threatening encounters.”

UC Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky filed a response for the Hernandez family. He urged the court to stand aside and let a jury decide whether the officer’s actions were reasonable.

“The 9th Circuit simply held that it should be for the jury to resolve the factual dispute over what happened,” he said.

The justices had considered the appeal since late February before finally turning it down without comment on Monday.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled police officers may be sued for unreasonable searches and seizures only if they are shown to have knowingly violated clearly established law.

However, this doctrine of “qualified immunity” has divided judges over whether a particular rule or limit has been clearly established.

The 9th Circuit majority said shooting a fallen suspect crosses the line.

“It has been clearly established for more than a decade that when an officer shoots and wounds a suspect, and he falls to the ground, the officer cannot continue to shoot him, absent some indication that he presents a continuing threat,” wrote Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen.

“A fallen and injured suspect armed only with a bladed instrument does not present a continuing threat merely because he makes nonthreatening movements on the ground. … Under such circumstances, a jury could reasonably find that she employed constitutionally excessive force. If so, she is not entitled to qualified immunity,” she said.

The five dissenters said the officer made a reasonable split-second decision.

Judge Ryan Nelson said McBride “was justified in shooting Daniel Hernandez to alleviate the risk that he posed when he advanced toward her while armed and ignoring commands to stop. … She cannot be reasonably expected or required to reassess her shooting in a tight six second period during an intense and dangerous situation throughout which Hernandez was rising and never stopped moving.”

Judge Patrick Bumatay echoed this concern.

“Judges review police shootings only in hindsight. We review police tapes years after the fact. We get to rewind, pause, fast forward — analyzing the situation frame-by-frame. While the advent of police bodycam videos has been a welcome change, we can’t ignore that real life isn’t in slow motion,” he said.

PHILADELPHIA — The Trump administration can replace a slavery exhibit at George Washington’s home in Philadelphia, a federal appeals court panel said Thursday, striking down a lower court’s injunction that required the National Park Service to reinstall the interpretive panels.

The unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge wrongly interpreted Philadelphia’s contract claims involving Independence National Historical Park, saying the city merely having standing to sue did not mean its arguments had merit. The panel also praised the plans for the replacement installation, writing that they were “full of historical context,” despite objections from historians and city officials that the content appears whitewashed.

The ruling comes a week after a Massachusetts federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore sites changed under an executive order calling for the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks to not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” The federal government has asked for a stay on that ruling while it appeals.

It was unclear how the Massachusetts ruling would affect the restoration or replacement of the panels at the President’s House Site. About half the large panels at the outdoor exhibit had been restored before a February pause in the work.

Messages to spokespeople for the Department of Interior and the National Park Service were not returned.

In a statement on Instagram late Thursday, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker vowed to pursue legal avenues to reverse the decision.

“We cannot and WILL not rest until the full story of American history – including the existence of Slavery at the President’s House here in Philadelphia – is told, for our Nation and the World to see,” she wrote.

Dawn Chavous, a volunteer for Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, one of the advocacy groups that helped develop the site in the 2000s, said they are disappointed with the decision but are speaking to their attorneys and considering options.

“For decades, ATAC has worked to ensure that the stories of the enslaved African descendants who lived and labored at the President’s House are not erased, overlooked, or misrepresented,” the group said in an emailed statement. “That commitment remains unwavering. We believe that historical truth matters, and we will continue to advocate for the protection, preservation, and accurate interpretation of this important chapter of American history.”

The city of Philadelphia sued in January after the National Park Service, in response to President Trump’s executive order, removed the explanatory panels from the President’s House Site, where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital.

The city had worked in tandem with the federal government, historians and private partners to create the exhibit in the early 2000s — as part of a longstanding cooperation agreement over the downtown historical park — and contributed $1.5 million toward its creation.

The city argued that the federal government must consult with the city before making changes to the President’s House Site. Justice Department lawyers argued the administration alone can decide what stories are told at National Park Service properties.

In its ruling Thursday, the appeals panel said the maintenance portion of the contract between the city and the federal government could not be interpreted to mean the site would remain as it was when it was completed.

“The duty to ‘maintain’ is better understood as a general management obligation that accompanies ownership, not a promise that the exhibits will forever remain in place regardless of the owner’s wishes,” the opinion said.

Casey and Lauer write for the Associated Press. Casey contributed to this report from Boston.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a Trump administration appeal and decide if “criminal aliens” may be held indefinitely while they fight deportation.

The case to be heard in the fall could give the administration more power to arrest and hold immigrants, including green card holders, who have criminal records.

The government’s lawyers say immigration laws call for deporting non-citizens with “aggravated felonies” on their records. And in such cases, they say these people may be held for months or even years while their claims are before the immigration courts.

Judges have been split on whether non-citizens fighting deportation have a right to a bond hearing and a chance to go free if they pose no risk to public safety.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled for a pair of green card holders who faced deportation to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Both had been convicted of assaults that were characterized as aggravated felonies under the immigration laws.

However, the appeals court said their “prolonged detention” was unconstitutional if they were given no bond hearing and no chance to go free.

They were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawyers urged the court to turn down the appeal.

“For the first time in this litigation, the government argues that civil detention ‘does not implicate any fundamental rights’ and so the Due Process Clause affords the detained men no protections—substantive or procedural,” they wrote.

In the past, they said the Supreme Court had accepted the “bedrock principle” that detained persons may have a right to seek their release on bond.

One of the two men had left this country and returned to Jamaica, the ACLU lawyers said. But Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer urged the court to rule on the issue.

The detained men “have no procedural due-process right to a bond hearing on whether they are a flight risk or danger to the community,” he told the court. “Individualized findings about flight risk and danger are irrelevant” under the immigration laws which called for “mandatory detention based on their aggravated-felony convictions alone.”

NEW YORK — President Trump won’t have to pay an $83-million defamation award to a longtime advice columnist until the U.S. Supreme Court gets a chance to review the case or reject an appeal, according to a court entry Tuesday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to a request by one of Trump’s lawyers to let the president delay the payment to E. Jean Carroll, though it required that Trump post a $7.4-million bond to cover any additional interest costs, a request Carroll’s attorney had made.

The appeals court late last month refused Trump’s request for a rare meeting of the full 2nd Circuit to hear an appeal of a three-judge panel’s affirmation of the January 2024 verdict.

Afterward, Trump attorney Justin D. Smith asked the 2nd Circuit to stay the effect of its decision upholding the award so that the president would not be forced to pay the judgment before the high court has a chance to consider an appeal.

Smith said last week there was a “fair prospect” that the Supreme Court will find in favor of Trump, who has called Carroll’s claims — first made publicly in 2019 — that she was sexually attacked by Trump in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996, a “made-up scam.”

The $83-million award to Carroll, 82, came from a jury that briefly heard Trump testify and observed his animated behavior for several days.

In upholding the verdict, a 2nd Circuit panel wrote in September 2025 that Trump continued his attacks against Carroll for at least five years, making them “more extreme and frequent as the trial approached.”

“He also continued these same attacks during the trial itself,” the appeals court said. “In one such statement, issued two days into the trial, Trump proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll ‘a thousand times.’ ”

The jury had been instructed to accept the findings of a jury that in May 2023 awarded Carroll $5 million after concluding Trump sexually abused her in the department store and then defamed her after she published her account of it in a 2019 memoir.

Trump is challenging the $83-million award on several grounds, asserting “absolute immunity” for comments he made while president as he disavowed knowing Carroll and attacked her motivations, saying they were politically driven or arose from a desire to promote her memoir.

Sisak and Neumeister write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — An appeals court on Friday blocked President Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access, a key pillar of the Republican president’s plan to crack down on migration at the southern border of the U.S.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president can’t circumvent that.

The panel concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn’t authorize the president to remove the plaintiffs under “procedures of his own making,” allow him to suspend plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum or curtail procedures for adjudicating their anti-torture claims.

“The power by proclamation to temporarily suspend the entry of specified foreign individuals into the United States does not contain implicit authority to override the INA’s mandatory process to summarily remove foreign individuals,” wrote Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Biden.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said in a statement that the appellate ruling is “essential for those fleeing danger who have been denied even a hearing to present asylum claims under the Trump administration’s unlawful and inhumane executive order.”

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump nominee, wrote a partial dissent. He said the law gives immigrants protections against removal to countries where they would be persecuted, but the administration can issue broad denials of asylum applications.

Walker, however, agreed with the majority that the president cannot deport migrants to countries where they will be persecuted or strip them of mandatory procedures that protect against their removal.

Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was nominated by Democratic President Obama, also heard the case.