2025 Wisconsin Statutes & Annotations
Chapter 227 - Administrative procedure and review.
227.05 - Agency publications.
227.05 Agency publications. An agency, other than the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, the Technical College System Board, or the department of employee trust funds, shall identify the applicable provision of federal law or the applicable state statutory or administrative code provision that supports any statement or interpretation of law that the agency makes in any publication, whether in print or on the agency’s Internet site, including guidance documents, forms, pamphlets, or other informational materials, regarding the laws the agency administers.
History: 2017 a. 369.
NOTE: In Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 1 v. Vos, 2020 WI 67, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that this section is facially unconstitutional to the extent that it addresses guidance documents.
The legislature may enact the laws the executive is duty-bound to execute, but it may not control the executive’s knowledge or intentions about those laws. Nor may the legislature mute or modulate the communication of the executive’s knowledge or intentions to the public. Because there was no set of facts pursuant to which this section, to the extent it applied to guidance documents, and s. 227.112 would not impermissibly interfere with the executive’s exercise of core constitutional power, they were in that respect facially unconstitutional. Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 1 v. Vos, 2020 WI 67, 393 Wis. 2d 38, 946 N.W.2d 35, 19-0614.
