The Wisconsin Supreme Court in April 2025 upheld Gov. Tony Evers’ use of the partial veto to convert a two-year funding increase for schools into one that would last 2,425 years, prompting Republican lawmakers to propose a constitutional amendment limiting the governor’s veto power on the November 2026 ballot, according to the court’s majority opinion in LeMieux v. Evers.

In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled that Evers acted within his authority under Article V, Section 10 of the Wisconsin Constitution when he removed digits and a hyphen from the 2023-25 budget, effectively extending a $325 per-student funding increase for more than 400 years, according to the budget bill.

The partial veto authority was added to the Wisconsin Constitution in 1930 to allow governors to strike parts of bills without rejecting them entirely or rewriting the bill, according to Article V, Section 10. The amendment was intended to prevent lawmakers from bundling unrelated items into one large bill, according to documents released by the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau.

Wisconsin governors of both parties have used the partial veto expansively over the decades, prompting additional constitutional amendments, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau.

In 1990, voters approved an amendment prohibiting the governor from creating a new word by striking individual letters, a practice dubbed the “Vanna White veto,” according to court documents. In 2008, voters approved another amendment barring combining parts of separate sentences to form new provisions, or the “Frankenstein veto,” according to the court documents.

The Wisconsin Constitution allows governors to approve appropriation bills “in whole or in part.” The Wisconsin Supreme Court has qualified this language to individual words and letters of appropriation bills, according to Bryna Godar, a staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

“Historically, governors have used this power in more and more creative ways,” Godar said. “The Wisconsin Supreme Court has long been relatively permissive about those uses.”

The 1990 and 2008 amendments limited certain techniques but left intact the governor’s ability to strike numbers, words and punctuation in appropriation bills, according to court documents. The 2025 case centered on whether removing digits to alter the duration of a funding increase violated those voter-imposed limits, according to PBS Wisconsin.

Plaintiffs argued that digits should be treated the same as letters, and removing individual digits to transform “2023-24” and “2024-25” into “2425” violated the nature of prior amendments, according to Godar. But the court concluded it had historically treated digits and letters differently and declined to extend the 1990 amendment’s letter restriction to numbers, according to the court’s majority opinion in LeMieux v. Evers.

The court’s ruling relied heavily on existing case law interpreting the governor’s partial veto authority, according to Godar.

The plaintiffs did not directly ask the court to overturn its prior decisions on the scope of veto power, according to Godar. As a result, the justices evaluated the case within the framework of longstanding precedent rather than reconsidering the foundation of that precedent itself, according to Godar.

“That precedent basically lets the governor do a wide range of vetoes as long as what remains is a complete and workable law that’s on the same subject to the prior text of the bill,” Godar said.

Republican lawmakers, including State Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, argue the decision underscores the need for a constitutional amendment, according to The Chronotype.

The veto disrupts the balance of power between the legislative and executive branch by allowing the governor to extensively alter bills without legislative approval, according to Nedweski.

“There was not one legislator who voted to increase our property taxes for 400 years,” Nedweski said. “With a single stroke of his pen, Governor Evers increased property taxes effectively for four centuries, and that was not done at the representation of the people through the legislature.”

Wisconsin voters have repeatedly acted to restrict the scope of the governor’s veto power, according to Nedweski.

Nedweski referenced previous voter-approved amendments limiting partial veto authority, including the 1990 ban on the “Vanna White” under Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson’s administration and the 2008 ban on the “Frankenstein veto” under Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle.

Nedweski believes concern with the partial veto should be a concern of separation of power rather than party politics.

“The governor should not be able to act as king and eliminate the decisions of the representative legislature,” Nedweski said. “The legislature is the people’s house. For the governor to override the will of the people is dangerous, no matter who is in power.”

Nedweski also argued that the $325 per-pupil annual increase tied to local property taxes is financially unsustainable over the long term.

The proposed amendment would prohibit governors from using the partial veto to create or extend provisions by striking digits, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

“It would not overhaul the governor’s partial veto power,” Godar said. “All that it would do is provide that the governor cannot use that power to create or increase any tax fee.”

Voters will decide in November 2026 whether to adopt restrictions limiting the governor’s ability to alter appropriation bills, according to WMTV15.