July 8, 2025 – A unanimous Wisconsin Supreme Court recently determined that 2011 Wis. Act 10 (Act 10) removed the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Authority (Authority) from prior statutory requirements to collectively bargain.

The decision came in Service Employees International Union Healthcare Wisconsin (SEIU) v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC), 2025 WI 29 (June 27, 2025).

The Court disagreed, however, with methods of statutory interpretation as defined in State ex rel. Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane County, 2004 WI 58 (2004).

“When we examine the statutory language along with the statutory history, it is clear that Act 10 ended the collective bargaining requirements formerly placed on the Authority,” wrote Justice Brian Hagedorn.

“Rather than treat Kalal like an ironclad rulebook of statutory interpretation,” wrote Justice Rebecca Frank Dallet in her concurrence joined by Chief Justice Ann Walsh Bradley and Justices Jill L. Karofsky and Janet C. Protasiewicz, “I would dispense with its fictions and formalistic labels.”

“Instead, we should embrace the ‘more comprehensive’ and ‘holistic’ approach to statutory interpretation that I have advocated for before,” Dallet wrote.

“Let’s be clear,” began Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley’s concurrence joined by Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler, “Justice Dallet’s concurrence isn’t merely a spirited discussion or even an invitation for measured doctrinal refinement; it’s an open appeal for judges in this state to legislate from the bench.”

Collective Bargaining

SEIU represented the Authority’s employees until Act 10, which, after existing contracts expired, ended collective bargaining between the Authority and its employees.

“In recent years,” however, employees asked again for the Authority to recognize SEIU as their representative. When the Authority refused, employees threatened to strike.

To prevent the strike, the Authority and SEIU signed a Memorandum of Understanding that resulted in their petitioning WERC to determine if the Authority was required to collectively bargain.

WERC determined that Act 10 ended collective bargaining with the Authority. Dane County Circuit Court affirmed the decision, which reached the Supreme Court on bypass.

Statutory Interpretation

The opinion’s analysis began with Wisconsin’s rules of statutory interpretation, encapsulated in the familiar citation of Kalal.

Foremost, Kalal stands for “the written text is the law; that is what legislators voted on and binds the public,” wrote Justice Hagedorn in the opinion of the court.

Sources to understand a statute may be intrinsic or extrinsic, the opinion explained.

Intrinsic sources, “based on or derived from the enacted law itself … include the statutory text at issue, related statutes and phrases, a statute’s place within the statutory structure, its stated or textually manifest purpose, and statutory history.”

In contrast, extrinsic sources outside the text are typically legislative history. These sources “are secondary and used to confirm” statutory plain meaning derived from primary sources, “or resolve any ambiguity.”

SEIU’s argument “that statutory history is not part of a plain meaning analysis” drew the need to define its relevance. Kalal, however, “explicitly rejected SEIU’s language-only argument,” the opinion explained.

In conclusion, “decades of statutory interpretation cases from this court” state that “all intrinsic sources – text, context, and structure – are essential components of a plain meaning analysis.”

Peace Act

The University of Wisconsin originally operated the University of Wisconsin hospitals and clinics, and its employees were state employees covered by state collective bargaining laws.

In 1995, the Legislature created the Authority, which has the “power to select and hire its own employees” and administer them “without the input of the state.”

The Legislature also explicitly placed the Authority’s employees under the Wisconsin Employment Peace Act (Peace Act), which “govern[s] collective bargaining for private employees.”

Among many changes to collective bargaining made by Act 10, “the [L]egislature repealed nearly every statute that explicitly incorporated the Authority into the Peace Act and otherwise provided for collective bargaining.”

SEIU’s Argument

SEIU argued that Authority employees remain under the Peace Act because the Authority fits the Peace Act’s definition of “employer” and that “person” as defined in the statutes includes “all partnerships, associations and bodies politic and corporate.”

For two reasons, the Supreme Court disagreed with the first argument. “[T]he Peace Act generally applies to private employers, suggesting the Authority is not a ‘corporation’ within the typical meaning of employer in the Peace Act.”

“Moreover, the Authority is not defined as a corporation; it is a ‘public body corporate and politic,” – “political” because it “is closely reviewed by the state” and “corporate” because “it does not receive general purpose revenue, can be sued, and can buy real estate.”

SEIU’s second argument, based on the statutory definition of “person” in Wis. Stat. section 990.01(26), failed based on statutory history, the opinion explained.

“If the Authority met the general definition of an employer in the Peace Act, there would be no need to include the Authority expressly the way the [L]egislature did in 1995.” It did so for a purpose.

If all the explicit references in the Peace Act served a “simply transitional” purpose, the opinion said, “we would not expect the [L]egislature to expunge all references to the Peace Act later, as it did.”

“While intrinsic evidence alone makes the answer clear, the legislative history confirms our reading,” the opinion explained. Act 10 ended collective bargaining requirements for the Authority.

‘Overly Rigid and Formalistic’

“Kalal is surely our most cited case. It has been referenced in nearly 1,500 Wisconsin appellate decisions,” Justice Dallet’s concurrence said, but some cases have applied Kalal in “an overly rigid and formalistic, rather than holistic, method of statutory interpretation.”

“Kalal tells us that we can, as a general rule, ignore that concededly relevant information” – extrinsic sources – “if the text is sufficiently clear,” Dallet wrote. “This is ‘quite puzzling,’ however, since information is either relevant or it is not.”

Statutory text should be given more weight, and if “legislative history is sometimes uninformative or unreliable [it] will often justify giving it little or no weight,” Dallet wrote.

But weight “doesn’t imply that we shouldn’t consider all of the evidence.”

“Under the rules of evidence, relevant information is almost always admissible, but we leave it up to the jury to determine how much weight to give that evidence,” Dallet wrote, and judges should be able to do the same.

“[W]e should of course start with the text of the statute but also be ‘upfront and honest about considering relevant extrinsic sources to interpret a statute’s meaning,’ conscious of course of those sources’ limitations.”

‘Fundamentally Misreads Kalal’

Justice R.G. Bradley’s concurrence argued that “Justice Dallet fundamentally misreads Kalal and fails to grasp a core tenet of statutory interpretation: not all evidence is created equal.”

Keeping judicial interpretation moored to the “laws ‘enacted by the legislature’” requires focusing on “all relevant intrinsic sources” to discern plain meaning, Justice R.G. Bradley explained.

“Contrary to Justice Dallet’s concurrence, extrinsic sources like legislative history are generally not relevant at all under Kalal,” Justice R.G. Bradley emphasized, but they can be used to resolve textual ambiguity and “to confirm or verify a plain-meaning interpretation.”

Citing five recent cases, Justice R.G. Bradley “documented the willingness of this court’s progressive majority to dispense with the rule of law in favor of their personal or political predilections.”

‘Rule of Law’

Justice R.G. Bradley warned that if three more justices join Justice Dallet in “chip[ping] away at the textualism Kalal espouses because she ‘prefer[s] an alternative methodology that is far more inclusive of extrinsic sources and policy considerations,’ … the rule of law shall be consigned to burn in perdition’s flames.”

Justice Dallet’s concurrence responded to what she called “the other concurrence’s hyperbolic claim.”

“[C]onsidering relevant and reliable legislative history when interpreting statutes won’t condemn the rule of law to eternal damnation,” Justice Dallet wrote.

“Nevertheless, at a time when the rule of law is genuinely threatened we – judges and citizens alike – must avoid demonizing those with whom we disagree and instead engage in good faith with opposing viewpoints. Only by doing that can we truly preserve the rule of law,” Dallet concluded.