Career History:
Appellate Judge, District IV Court of Appeals (2023 - present)
Dane County Circuit Court Judge (2020-2023)
State Representative, Wisconsin legislature (2011-2020)
Policy/Political Director, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin (2003-2011)
Associate, Balisle & Roberson (2000-2002)
Associate, Relles, Meeker & Borns (1998-2000)
Associate, Adelman, Adelman & Hynes (1996-1998)
To read the full official biography, click here. Source: wicourts.gov
Chris Taylor is a judge on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals — District IV, where she has served since 2023. District IV covers Madison and the surrounding southern and western counties of Wisconsin.
Before joining the Court of Appeals, Taylor served as a Dane County Circuit Court Judge from 2020 to 2023. Before her judicial service, she spent nine years in the Wisconsin State Legislature as a Democratic state representative from a Madison-area district, and worked as the policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin from 2003 to 2011. Earlier in her career, she practiced law in Madison.
Taylor was appointed to the trial court by Governor Tony Evers in 2020 and to the Court of Appeals by Evers in 2023.
Authored the majority. Taylor read Wisconsin's informed-consent statute, § 448.30, broadly—extending its reach to physicians who recommend or help plan a procedure even when they do not perform it themselves. Her textual analysis was thorough. The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed 5-2, but Chief Justice Ziegler and Justice Grassl Bradley dissented, arguing the opinion failed to define who actually counts as a "treating physician."
A patient went to her gynecologist for help with endometriosis, a painful reproductive condition. The gynecologist planned a colon surgery with another doctor and told him to also remove the patient's ovaries during the operation—but never told the patient about that plan. The patient woke up without her ovaries and sued. The legal question: does Wisconsin's informed-consent law cover a doctor who recommends a procedure but does not perform it? Taylor said yes. She started with the words. The law says "any physician who treats a patient" must inform. She used the dictionary, looked at how the legislature uses "treat" elsewhere in the same chapter, and refused to add limits the law does not contain. The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed 5-2. The dissent worried the rule would be hard to apply in future cases—a fair concern, but Taylor's reading of the statute was sound on the case in front of her.