2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election

The 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election was held on Tuesday, April 4, 2023, to elect a justice to the Wisconsin Supreme Court for a ten-year term. Milwaukee County circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly, effectively flipping the ideological balance of the court from a conservative to liberal majority. Incumbent justice Patience D. Roggensack chose to retire after 20 years on the court; she had identified as a conservative and voted consistently with the conservative 4–3 majority on the court. Protasiewicz and Kelly advanced from the February 21 nonpartisan primary, receiving 46% and 24% of the votes, respectively. Although Wisconsin Supreme Court justices are officially nonpartisan, Kelly was identified as being the Republican-aligned candidate and Protasiewicz the Democratic-aligned candidate. Other candidates in the 2023 primary included conservative Waukesha County circuit judge Jennifer Dorow and liberal Dane County circuit judge Everett Mitchell. The race was widely considered to be a de facto referendum on legal abortion access in Wisconsin, but election coverage also often focused on how the court would rule on future cases involving politically charged issues of voting rights and redistricting. This election also took place in the aftermath of Donald Trump's false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, with some national journalism focusing on how the outcome of the election could decide how the court would rule if a similar attempt were made to overturn the 2024 election. The election was described as the most important 2023 U . election; it was the most expensive judicial race to that point in U . history, with over $45 million ultimately spent. Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler called it "the most important election nobody's ever heard of." Protasiewicz won the election by 11 percentage points, which flipped the court to a liberal majority. Kelly lost by a slightly wider margin than his own defeat three years prior. Protasiewicz took office on August 1, 2023. The election was exceeded in campaign spending and voter turnout two years later in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.