LeMieux v. Evers: Reinforcing the Constitutional Limits on the Governor’s Partial Veto Power

Introduction

In Jeffery A. LeMieux, et al. v. Tony Evers, et al., 2025 WI 12, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was asked to decide whether Governor Evers exceeded his partial veto authority under Article V, Section 10(1) of the Wisconsin Constitution by striking words and digits in the 2023–25 biennial budget bill to extend an education revenue limit increase from two years to 402 years. Petitioners contended that this massive temporal expansion—and the method by which it was accomplished—violated two sub-clauses of § 10(1):

§ 10(1)(b): The governor may approve “in part” only those portions of an appropriation bill that constitute “a part” of the enacted whole.
§ 10(1)(c): The governor may not create a new word by deleting individual letters or create a new sentence by combining fragments of two or more sentences.

Petitioners argued that 402 years is not “part” of two years and that deleting digits to form a new number violated the letter-veto prohibition. The court, however, upheld the governor’s actions, reaffirming the historic scope of the deletion veto while clarifying the limits of the write-in veto and the meaning of § 10(1)(c).

Summary of the Judgment

By a 4–3 vote, with Justice Karofsky writing the lead opinion and Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Dallet and Protasiewicz joining parts, the court held that:

Under § 10(1)(b), the governor’s deletion veto is valid if the remaining text is complete, entire, and workable, applies only to appropriation bills, and remains germane to the original legislative purpose.
The “write-in” veto principle from Citizens Utility Board v. Klauser is strictly limited to reductions in monetary appropriations and does not extend to temporal or other non-monetary figures.
Section 10(1)(c) refers solely to the deletion of letters to form new words or the combination of sentence fragments; it does not prohibit deleting digits to create new numbers.

Consequently, the governor lawfully converted a two-year revenue limit increase into a 402-year limit increase by striking words and digits. The court stressed that, if the legislature wishes to curtail this power, it must either enact a statutory fix in the next budget or pursue a constitutional amendment.

Analysis

Precedents Cited

State ex rel. Wisconsin Telephone Co. v. Henry, 218 Wis. 302 (1935): Established the “complete, entire, and workable law” test for deletion vetoes.
State ex rel. Finnegan v. Dammann, 220 Wis. 143 (1936): Confirmed deletion vetoes apply only to appropriation bills.
State ex rel. Wis. Senate v. Thompson, 144 Wis. 2d 429 (1988): Held the governor may strike words, letters, or digits but introduced the germane-to-the-bill limitation.
State ex rel. Sundby v. Adamany, 71 Wis. 2d 118 (1976): Recognized that deletion vetoes may alter legislative policy.
State ex rel. Kleczka v. Conta, 82 Wis. 2d 679 (1978): Reaffirmed “complete, entire, and workable” as the sole deletion veto test.
Citizens Utility Board v. Klauser, 194 Wis. 2d 484 (1995): Upheld a narrow “write-in” veto reducing a $350,000 appropriation to $250,000.
Risser v. Klauser, 207 Wis. 2d 176 (1997): Limited the write-in veto to appropriation amounts.
Bartlett v. Evers, 2020 WI 68 (per curiam): Invalidated three creative deletion vetoes for introducing policies never passed by the legislature.

Legal Reasoning

1. Deletion Veto Principles (§ 10(1)(b))
The court reaffirmed four guideposts for deletion vetoes:

Remaining text must be a “complete, entire, and workable law.”
The veto must occur in a bill that itself is an appropriation bill.
What remains must be germane to the subject matter originally approved.
No new words by deleting letters; no new sentences by recombining fragments (Art. V, § 10(1)(c)).

Applying these rules, the court found that authorizing a $325 per-pupil increase through 2425 (as opposed to two years) produced a coherent, workable statute still related to K–12 revenue limits. It did not run afoul of any of the four deletion veto constraints.

2. Write-In Veto Principle
Petitioners urged an extension of the “part” test from Klauser—that a smaller appropriation is “part” of a larger appropriation—to temporal figures. The court declined, emphasizing that Klauser is a narrow exception grounded in the legislature’s long-recognized power to reduce monetary appropriations. No writing-in occurred here, so Klauser has no bearing on time-related figures.

3. Letter-Veto Prohibition (§ 10(1)(c))
The court held the clause barring “reject[ion of] individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill” applies only to alphabetical letters, not numerical digits. “Word” and “letter” in ordinary usage do not encompass “10,” “402,” or other digit sequences. Thus deleting digits to form new numbers does not violate that provision.

Impact

This decision clarifies that:

Governors retain broad partial veto authority under Wisconsin’s Constitution so long as the four Henry-Thompson limits are respected.
The write-in veto enunciated in Klauser remains confined to appropriation amounts; it does not extend to time periods, programmatic terms, or other non-monetary figures.
The 1990 letter-veto amendment does not restrict the deletion of numerical digits.

Future governors may continue creative deletion vetoes within these guardrails, and legislatures must strategize—by bill drafting, supermajority overrides, or constitutional amendments—if they wish to curb that power.

Complex Concepts Simplified

Partial Veto: The governor’s power to reject (“veto”) only portions of an appropriation bill rather than the entire bill.
Deletion Veto: Crossing out words, phrases, letters, or numbers from a bill before signing the rest.
Write-In Veto: Striking an amount in an appropriation and writing in a different amount (only valid for monetary figures under Klauser).
Complete, Entire, and Workable Law: After deletion, what remains must form a coherent statute—grammatically and operationally.
Germane: The vetoed or remaining text must relate directly to the original bill’s subject matter.
Letter-Veto Prohibition: The governor cannot delete letters within words to form new words (e.g., striking “s” from “cats” to make “cat”).

Conclusion

LeMieux v. Evers reaffirms the governor’s broad—but not limitless—partial veto power under Article V, § 10 of the Wisconsin Constitution. Gubernatorial deletions are constitutional so long as they:

Leave a complete, entire, and workable law;
Occur only in appropriation bills;
Remain germane to the original legislative purpose;
Do not delete letters to create new words or recombine sentence fragments.

The narrow write-in veto under Cities Utility Board v. Klauser remains confined to appropriation amounts, and the letter-veto ban does not reach numerical digits. With these guardrails in place, the legislature retains the ultimate authority to reshape or constrain the governor’s partial veto by statute or constitutional amendment.