Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit challenging the statutes in 2022, arguing they were too old to enforce
I mean, laws don't have a sunset date.
Unless there's a split between the upper and lower state legislatures and governor, why not just either pass a new law making abortion either explicitly illegal or repeal the old law so that it's explicitly legal? Like, what's the point of having court cases over some law from 1849?
What's the makeup of the legislature?
kagis
Ahh.
So the Republicans control the upper and lower legislative houses. The governor is a Democrat. The Republicans have a two-thirds supermajority in the upper house, but only a majority in the lower house. So basically, nobody has enough oomph to push through a change (at least if the division is along party lines, which it may not be in Wisconsin).
So based on that, the Republicans need two more seats in the 99-seat lower house to have a supermajority there as well and be able to override a governor's veto, or to get a Republican governor, which avoids the veto issue. They're very close to being able to pass legislation without Democratic support, but not quite there.
The Democrats are nowhere near having a majority in both houses, so they probably can't pass legislation anytime soon without Republican support.