MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for the state to permanently enact a ban on conversion therapy in a ruling that gives the governor more power over how state laws are enacted.
The court ruled that a Republican-controlled legislative committee’s rejection of a state agency rule that would effectively ban the practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ people was unconstitutional. The decision, which has a broad impact far beyond the conversion therapy issue, takes power away from the Legislature to block the enactment of rules by the governor's office that carry the force of law.
The 4-3 ruling from the liberal-controlled court comes amid the national battle over LGBTQ+ rights. It is also part of a broader effort by the Democratic governor to rein in the power of the GOP-controlled Legislature.
What is known as conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.
The practice has been banned in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank. It is also banned in more than a dozen communities across Wisconsin.
Advocates seeking to ban the practice want to forbid mental health professionals in the state from counseling clients with the goal of changing their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in March to hear a Colorado case about whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.
In both 2019 and 2020, the Wisconsin professional licensing board for therapists, counselors and social workers proposed a rule that listed conversion therapy as “unprofessional conduct.”
But the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules — a Republican-controlled panel in charge of approving state agency regulations — blocked the proposed rule twice, most recently in 2023.
The rule was in effect briefly in 2022 and took effect again in April 2024 when the Legislature adjourned without permanently suspending it.
Republicans who supported suspending the conversion therapy ban have insisted the issue isn’t the policy itself, but whether the licensing board had the authority to take the action it did.
The Supreme Court ruled that the legislative committee has been overreaching its authority in blocking a variety of state regulations during Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration.
The court’s ruling means the Legislature will not be able to block it again.
Evers called the ruling “incredibly important” and said it will stop a small number of lawmakers from “holding rules hostage without explanation or action and causing gridlock across state government.”
But Republican Sen. Steve Nass, co-chair of the legislative committee in question, said the ruling gives Evers “unchecked dominion to issue edicts without legislative review that will harm the rights of citizens.”
The Legislature’s attorney argued that decades of precedent backed up their argument, including a 1992 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling upholding the Legislature’s right to suspend state agency rules.
Evers argued that by blocking the rule, the legislative committee is taking over powers that the state constitution assigns to the governor and exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto.”
The Supreme Court agreed.
The court found that the Legislature was violating the state constitution’s requirement that any laws pass both houses of the Legislature and be presented to the governor.
The Legislature was illegally taking “action that alters the legal rights and duties of the executive branch and the people of Wisconsin,” Chief Justice Jill Karofsky wrote for the majority. She was joined by the court’s three other liberal justices.
Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley said the ruling “lets the executive branch exercise lawmaking power unfettered and unchecked.” She and fellow conservative Justice Annette Ziegler said in dissents that the ruling shifts too much power to the executive branch and holds the Legislature to a higher legal standard.
“Progressives like to protest against ‘kings’—unless it is one of their own making,” Bradley wrote.
Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, in a dissent, said the court's ruling is “devoid of legal analysis and raises more questions than it answers.”
Hagedorn argued for a more narrow ruling that would have only declared unconstitutional the legislative committee's indefinite objection to a building code rule.
The conversion therapy ban is one of several rules that have been blocked by the legislative committee. Others pertain to environmental regulations, vaccine requirements and public health protections.
The full impact of the ruling was still being reviewed, a spokesperson for the state licensing board said.
Environmental groups hailed the ruling.
The decision will prevent a small number of lawmakers from blocking the enactment of environmental protections passed by the Legislature and signed into law, said Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates.
The court previously sided with Evers in one issue brought in the lawsuit, ruling 6-1 last year that another legislative committee was illegally preventing the state Department of Natural Resources from funding grants to local governments and nongovernmental organizations for environmental projects under the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court as shown on Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Madison, Wis., cleared the way for a state ban on conversion therapy to be enacted with a ruling that broadens the governor's powers over administrative rules. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court as shown on Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Madison, Wis., cleared the way for a state ban on conversion therapy to be enacted with a ruling that broadens the governor's powers over administrative rules. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)
FILE - The entrance to the Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers is seen in the state Capitol in Madison, Wis., March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Todd Richmond, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who as an essential member of the Grateful Dead helped found the sound of the San Francisco counterculture of the 1960s and kept it alive through decades of tours and marathon jams, has died. He was 78.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” a statement on his Instagram page posted Saturday said. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”
Weir joined the Grateful Dead — originally the Warlocks — in 1965 in San Francisco at just 17 years old. He would spend the next 30 years playing rhythm guitar on virtually nonstop tours alongside fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.
“Longevity was never a major concern of ours,” Weir said when the Dead got the Grammys’ MusiCares Person of the Year honor last year. “Spreading joy through the music was all we ever really had in mind, and we got plenty of that done.”
Weir wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including “Sugar Magnolia,” “One More Saturday Night” and “Mexicali Blues.”
After Garcia’s death, Weir would be the Dead's most recognizable face. In the decades since, he kept playing with other projects that kept alive the band's music and legendary fan base, including Ratdog, The Other Ones, and Dead & Company.
Weir’s death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving original member. Founding bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024. The band's other drummer, Mickey Hart, practically an original member since joining in 1967, is also alive at 82. The fifth founding member, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, died in 1973.
Dead & Company, featuring former members and guitarist and singer John Mayer, played a series of concerts for the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in July at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, drawing some 60,000 fans a day for three days.
Born Robert Hall Parber in San Francisco in 1947, Weir would take on the last name of the adoptive parents who raised him in nearby Atherton.
He had dyslexia that went undiagnosed at the time, struggled in school as a child and was kicked out of several institutions. At a Colorado boarding school for boys with behavioral problems, he met his frequent lyricist-collaborator John Perry Barlow.
Weir began playing guitar at age 13 and a few years later met and latched on to Garcia, five years his senior, when he heard him playing banjo in Palo Alto, California.
Weir became the Dead's youngest member and looked like a fresh-faced high-schooler in its early years. He was generally less shaggy than the rest of the band, but he had a long beard like Garcia’s in later years.
The band made its name and forged its identity at the LSD-fueled Acid Tests thrown in San Francisco in the mid-1960s by writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.
Their music — called acid rock at its psychedelic inception — incorporated elements of blues, jazz and country in long improvisational jams at concerts.
The band went on to make classic albums including “American Beauty” and “Workingman's Dead,” but the Dead would always be primarily known as a live sensation.
“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road,” the statement on his Instagram page said. It added that Weir will “forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”
Weir took take a backseat to Garcia, whose face was as much an avatar of the band as its legendary skull logo. At times he would be called “The Other One,” the name of an early song he wrote and the title of a 2014 documentary about him.
“Bob Weir wasn’t The Other One, he was That Guy,” TV personality and devoted Dead fan Andy Cohen said on Instagram on Saturday night. “He was impossibly beautiful and wildly fiery, intense and passionate.”
Others paying tribute included the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, who posted “God Bless Bob Weir” on the social platform X.
In New York, the Empire State Building was lit up in tie-dye colors in his honor.
The band survived long past the hippie moment of its birth, with its ultra-devoted fans known as Deadheads often following them on tours that persisted despite decades of shifting music and culture.
Ubiquitous bumper stickers and T-shirts showed dancing, colored bears, another symbol of the band, and signature phrases like “ain't no time to hate” and “not all who wander are lost.”
The Dead won few Grammys — they were always a little too esoteric — getting only a lifetime achievement award in 2007 and the best music film award in 2018, along with the 2025 MusiCares honor.
Just as rare were hit pop singles. “Touch of Grey,” which brought a big surge in the aging band's popularity in 1987, was their only Billboard Top 10 hit.
But in 2024 they set a record for all artists with their 59th album in Billboard's Top 40. Forty-one of those came since 2012, thanks to the popularity of a series of archival albums compiled by David Lemieux.
Weir also made solo albums, including 1972's “Ace,” 1978's “Heaven Help The Fool” and 2016's “Blue Mountain.”
He is survived by his wife, Natascha, and daughters Monet and Chloe.
FILE - Bob Weir plays guitar with his band The Dead, formerly the Grateful Dead, at the Forum in the Inglewood section of Los Angeles, Calif. on Saturday May 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel,File)
FILE - This undated file photo shows members of the Grateful Dead band, from left to right, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Brent Mydland, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Kennedy Center Honors recipients from left; filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary American rock band the Grateful Dead band members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann Bob Weir and blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist Bonnie Raitt, applaud at at the 2024 Kennedy Center Honors reception in the East Room of the White House, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta,File)
FILE - Bob Weir arrives at Willie Nelson 90, celebrating the singer's 90th birthday on Saturday, April 29, 2023, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. (Photo by Allison Dinner/Invision/AP,File)
FILE - Bob Weir of Dead & Company performs at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in Manchester, Tenn. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP,File)
