On June 16, 2026, the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted 6-1 to grant review in Abby Windows, LLC v. LIRC, 2024AP001013. The Court’s order scheduled briefing in the case to begin in July of 2026, meaning that the Court will presumably hear and decide the case during the 2026-27 term. Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley, whose term expires on July 31, 2026, dissented to the Court’s order granting review. The order did not provide Justice Grassl Bradley’s reasoning.
As discussed in Stafford Rosenbaum’s prior blogpost, “The End of the Textualist Era? Wisconsin Supreme Court Presented with Opportunity to Overturn Kalal,” LIRC’s petition for review expressly requested that the Wisconsin Supreme Court “revisit and modify” Wisconsin’s seminal case on statutory interpretation, State ex rel. Kalal v. Cir. Ct. Dane Cnty., 2004 WI 58, 271 Wis. 2d 633, 681 N.W.2d 110. LIRC’s request to overturn Kalal followed on the heels of Justice Dallet’s own call on to the Court to do the same in SEIU Healthcare of Wis. v. WERC, 2025 WI 29, 416 Wis. 2d 688, 22 N.W.2d 876 (Dallet, J., concurring). Justice Dallet’s concurrence strongly criticized Kalal’s textualist two-step methodology and proposed adopting a broader, more holistic approach in its stead. The concurrence hinted that the new approach would, like Kalal, begin with the text of the statute but that it would then consider all relevant sources of meaning, intrinsic and extrinsic alike, regardless of ambiguity, giving due consideration to each source’s limitations. As further noted in Stafford Rosenbaum’s prior Kalal blogpost, the Court could resolve Abby Windows, LLC without overturning Kalal. However, in light of the 6-1 vote in favor of granting review and the fact that a majority of the justices signed onto Justice Dallet’s concurrence in SEIU Healthcare of Wis., practitioners should stay tuned for a new seminal case on statutory interpretation in Wisconsin.
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