A Wisconsin appeals court has reversed a lower-court ruling that struck down the state's landmark 2011 law curbing public-employee collective bargaining, setting up a likely showdown before a liberal-majority state Supreme Court poised to tilt even further left.

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals on Wednesday overturned Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost's December 2024 decision that had declared Act 10 unconstitutional, the Associated Press reported. The ruling means Act 10, the signature achievement of former Gov. Scott Walker, remains the law in Wisconsin, at least for now. Seven unions and three union leaders brought the lawsuit challenging the statute, and they are expected to appeal to the state's highest court.

That next step is where the politics get unavoidable. The Wisconsin Supreme Court already sits at a 4-3 liberal majority after flipping in 2023. Newly elected Justice Chris Taylor, a liberal-backed appeals court judge who won her seat in April, joins the bench next week, pushing the majority to 5-2. The unions will not lack for sympathetic ears.

Act 10 reshaped Wisconsin's public workforce, and its politics

Act 10, passed by a Republican-controlled legislature in 2011, rewrote the rules for public-sector labor in Wisconsin. The law restricted public unions to bargaining solely over base wage increases capped at inflation. It ended the automatic withdrawal of union dues from paychecks. It required unions to hold annual recertification votes. And it forced public workers to pay more for their own health insurance and retirement benefits.

The law carved out exemptions for firefighters and other public safety workers, a distinction that became the legal fulcrum for the unions' challenge. Plaintiffs argued that those exemptions created unconstitutional disparities among public employees.

Attorneys for the legislature countered that the exemptions are legal, that courts have upheld them before, and that the Wisconsin Supreme Court itself rejected nearly identical arguments in 2014. In court filings, the legislature's lawyers said the only thing that has changed since that 2014 ruling is the makeup of the court, a blunt acknowledgment that the unions' real leverage is political, not legal.

That framing has history behind it. When the law first passed, it drew as many as 100,000 protesters to the state Capitol in weeks of demonstrations. It spurred an unsuccessful recall attempt against Walker. And it launched Walker onto the national stage, he used his fights with public-sector unions to mount a presidential campaign, though that bid ended in 2015 just months after it began.

The consequences for organized labor were measurable. A 2022 analysis by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a nonpartisan research group, found that since 2000, Wisconsin had experienced the largest decline in the proportion of its workforce that is unionized of any state in the country. The Republican legislature deepened that trend in 2015 by passing a right-to-work law that limited the power of private-sector unions as well.

Unions lost in federal court on the same exemption argument

The legal challenge to Act 10's public-safety exemptions is not new. A federal appellate court in Chicago heard arguments over the same constitutional question years earlier. A U.S. District Judge had struck down portions of Act 10, finding that the public-safety union exemption violated equal protection guarantees and noting that all exempt unions had supported Walker's 2010 campaign. Leon Dayan, an attorney for the Wisconsin Education Association, told the court the distinction was "a political payback distinction and not a substantive policy distinction." Special Counsel Joseph Olson, arguing for the state, pushed back, saying "the court should be leery to ascribe political animus."

That federal case, combined with separate state-level rulings, shows how persistently unions have pressed the exemption argument, and how consistently they have struggled to make it stick in courts that were not already ideologically aligned with their position.

Workers, meanwhile, have pushed in the opposite direction. When the 2015 right-to-work law faced its own legal challenge, five Wisconsin employees represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed a brief defending the statute. Mark Mix, the foundation's president, said the law "provides a simple but essential protection for Wisconsin employees by protecting freedom of choice when it comes to union membership and payment of dues and fees." Right-to-work laws have "withstood intense legal scrutiny for over 60 years," the foundation argued.

The pattern is consistent: labor restrictions passed through the democratic process in Wisconsin have survived repeated courtroom challenges, until, that is, the courts themselves changed.

A 5-2 liberal court may do what legislatures have not

All five Democratic candidates for governor in this cycle have vowed to repeal Act 10 if elected. The Democratic gubernatorial primary is set for August 11. But Democrats have not held the legislative majorities needed to repeal the law through normal democratic channels. The courts have become the alternative path.

Judge Frost's December 2024 ruling striking down Act 10 offered a preview of what that path looks like. His decision put the law on hold pending appeal, and for months the legal status of public-union bargaining in Wisconsin hung in limbo. Wednesday's appeals court reversal restores Act 10, but the unions' expected appeal to the Supreme Court means the question is far from settled.

The timing of Chris Taylor's arrival on the bench sharpens the stakes. Taylor, who won her seat in April, has been backed by liberal groups and will expand the court's left-leaning majority from a narrow 4-3 to a commanding 5-2. A Taylor win was expected to preserve liberal control of the court until at least 2030, and the elected justice serves a 10-year term, meaning major legal disputes, including redistricting battles and election-related cases, will pass through a court shaped by this outcome for years to come.

The broader pattern in Wisconsin mirrors what conservative observers have flagged in other states: when progressive policy goals cannot survive the legislative process, the judiciary becomes the preferred venue. Federal judges blocking state laws hours before they take effect has become a recurring feature of American governance, and Wisconsin's Act 10 saga fits the template.

The New York Post noted earlier this year that Act 10 "helped close a multibillion-dollar budget gap" and that Democrats lacked the legislative votes to repeal it, making a liberal court majority the only realistic path to overturning the law. Over $80 million poured into the prior Wisconsin Supreme Court race, reflecting the national stakes attached to who sits on that bench.

The legislature's attorneys made the point directly in their filings: the legal arguments against Act 10 have not changed since 2014. What changed is the court. That is not a legal argument. It is a political one.

Appellate courts across the country continue to shape policy in ways that bypass legislatures, a dynamic visible in cases ranging from First Amendment challenges to state education laws to disputes over federal agency authority. Wisconsin's Act 10 fight is one more front in that broader contest over whether elected lawmakers or appointed judges set the rules.

For Wisconsin taxpayers and public workers who have operated under Act 10 for more than a decade, the appeals court ruling offers temporary clarity. The law stands. Unions cannot bargain beyond base wages capped at inflation. Dues are not automatically deducted. Annual recertification votes remain required.

But the unions are heading to a Supreme Court that was built to give them what the legislature would not. If the 5-2 liberal majority overturns Act 10, it will not be because the law or the Constitution changed. It will be because the judges did.