Because past cases are often cited as precedent in new lawsuits, impact litigation can influence the legal outcomes of important issues for decades. One such case was the Zablocki v. Redhail right to re-marry suit which Legal Action took all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Almost 40 years later, it was one of the cases cited to establish the right to LGBT+ marriages in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court case.

More than 15 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act, Legal Action sued members of the Milwaukee County Transit Board and other transportation officials to secure greater access for people with disabilities to public transportation. As a result of our successful lawsuit, the city of Milwaukee added accessible busses to its fleet and the city of Madison did the same voluntarily.

Our structural change litigation efforts paved the way forward for two important milestones at the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission. Men of color were admitted to the fire training academy for the first time in 1975 following racial discrimination cases we filed around the same time that the NAACP filed. Because of this work, the Department of Justice was able to continue to file cases that ultimately led to Milwaukee becoming the second city nationwide to admit women into the Fire Department

In the 2017 Wisconsin Supreme Court case, Teague v. Schimel, Legal Action attorneys won a victory that forced the Wisconsin Department of Justice to fix criminal history reports for victims of identity theft. For years before that lawsuit, the Department of Justice had refused to separate a victim’s criminal history reports from the records of any person who had ever used their identity in an encounter with the police. As a result of that policy, the Department of Justice sold criminal history reports which made some victims of identity theft look as if they had a lengthy criminal record, even if they had none. The case established, more specifically, that individuals had a right to challenge their own criminal history record reports if they believed those reports were inaccurate and a right to appeal the Department of Justice’s refusal to correct incorrect records in court.

In 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court accepted a rules change petition filed by Legal Action to reduce the length of time eviction records are held in the publicly searchable court database from 20 years to just 2 years in most cases. Many organizations testified in support of the petition and helped ensure it’s adoption. This change limits the impact an eviction record can have on a family trying to find rental housing. When families have an eviction on their record, it often means that they are forced into higher cost and lower quality housing – increasing the likelihood of future eviction. By removing the record of an eviction filing sooner, more Wisconsin families will be able to find and secure safe and affordable housing at a reasonable cost. In addition, a uniform approach to record retention ensures consistency across the state, eliminates the uneven distribution of redacted eviction records, and aligns with common practices for record removal in other areas of law.

An employer was not paying farmworkers with H-2A visas correctly and forced them to work 12-hour days, 7 days a week. The employer also confiscated the farmworkers’ passports and discouraged them from speaking with anyone outside of the workplace. Following a discrete meeting with the affected farmworkers who were afraid of retaliation, Legal Action reported the employer’s activities to law enforcement. Additionally, we filed a federal civil complaint against the employer claiming unpaid wages, violations of Wisconsin’s migrant labor laws, and labor trafficking. The employer agreed to settle the case and our clients received payment for hours worked and compensation for some of the abuses.