OP-ED | The Biden Student Loan Relief Plan is Unconstitutional

Last week, WILL asked the asked the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to temporarily pause the Biden Administration’s student loan forgiveness program, on behalf of the Brown County Taxpayers Association. The lawsuit was the first and only lawsuit to have reached SCOTUS, which was unprecedented for both the suit and WILL.

While it was dismissed, WILL President and General Counsel, Rick Esenberg, and Deputy Counsel, Dan Lennington, wrote in the National Review about this recent challenge in litigation. "It's possible that no one will be able to bring a successful lawsuit in this matter. If you think there's something wrong with that, you're right."

New Policy Report | Price Transparency Can Lower Healthcare Costs

WILL issued a new report last week, Empowering Patients: How Price Transparency Will Lower Healthcare Costs. The report explains how healthcare price transparency works, and how research has found that it can lower costs for consumers. 🏥💵

🗯 WILL Policy Associate Miranda Spindt said, “As Americans struggle to make ends meet, healthcare costs are eating up a larger share of their budgets. Full healthcare price transparency will introduce market forces into the healthcare system, and empower patients to make more informed decisions while lowering costs.” 

🗯 WILL Policy Director, Kyle Koenen, added, “Healthcare continues to be one of the only sectors of the economy where consumers are left in the dark when it comes to price. This uncertainty leads to patients avoiding or delaying care. Wisconsin should take swift action to pass meaningful price transparency laws and join the growing number of states that have embraced this common-sense reform.” 

📰 Read more about the report in The Center Square. 

📺 Watch an educational video explaining the issue here. 

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New Lawsuit Against the City of La Crosse Over First Amendment Violation

WILL filed a federal lawsuit against the City of La Crosse on behalf of Joy Buchman, a licensed mental health professional and owner of Kinsman Redeemer Counseling Center, LLC (“Kinsman”). The suit challenges the city’s ordinance that penalizes medical or mental health professionals if they express certain prohibited viewpoints relating to sexual orientation or gender identity when counseling their minor patients. 

The ordinance would, for example, require professional counselors to either affirm the decision of any minor patient to transition to a new gender identity—despite ongoing, good-faith disagreements among professionals on whether and under what circumstances such transitions should take place—or remain silent.

🗯 WILL Deputy Counsel, Anthony LoCoco, said, “The City of La Crosse is under the mistaken impression that it can simply punish citizens who dare to voice officially disfavored viewpoints on public issues of critical importance. The First Amendment prohibits exactly this kind of big-government bullying. Attempts to falsely paint as hateful those who share good-faith disagreements on matters going to the core of what it means to be human won’t salvage the City’s position.”

🗯 Licensed counselor and owner of Kinsman, Joy Buchman, said, “My mission as a counselor is to provide healing and guidance to anyone who comes to me for help. Government officials should not be allowed to police the private conservations I have with clients in need and then punish me for saying something they don’t like.”

🎙For more details regarding this suit, listen to an episode of The Vicki McKenna Show (starting at 22:27).

INTERVIEW | New paper aims to give teachers alternative views on race, capitalism, U.S. history

Earlier this month, WILL partnered up with Scott Niederjohn and Mark Schug- professors who have spent their careers crafting social studies curriculum and training teachers- for a policy report that explained how academic theories impact student learning of social studies.

The authors were recently interviewed in The Center Square, discussing the importance of this different educational approach. 

📖 Learn more about the full report here.

WILL Welcomes Cara Tolliver to the Team

WILL added Cara Tolliver, Associate Counsel, to expand WILL’s capacity for litigation. The growing WILL team continues its work to defend constitutional rights, advance the rule of law, promote education choice, and advocate for limited government.

🗯 WILL Associate Counsel, Cara Tolliver, said, “I am proud to join WILL in its freedom fighting mission against increasingly radicalized agendas that would sacrifice our constitutional system, and along with it, fundamental American liberties, to the whims of political campaigns and the administrative state. I particularly look forward to working on the constitutional protection of Speech and Association.”