Career History:
Appellate Judge, Court of Appeals - District II (appointed 2007)
Chief Judge, Court of Appeals (2015-2021)
Attorney, Private Practice, Foley & Lardner, LLP (1989-2007)
Law Clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb (1987-1988)
To read the full official biography, click here. Source: wicourts.gov
Lisa S. Neubauer is the Presiding Judge of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals — District II, having stepped into the administrative role in August 2025. She has served on the District II bench since 2007. District II covers Waukesha, Racine, Kenosha, and the southeastern counties of Wisconsin.
Neubauer was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Governor Jim Doyle in 2007. She served as Chief Judge of the entire Wisconsin Court of Appeals — the statewide administrative role — from 2015 to 2021. Earlier in her career, she was an attorney in private practice at Foley & Lardner LLP in Milwaukee for nearly two decades, and served as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb in the Western District of Wisconsin.
Neubauer ran for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2019 but lost a closely contested statewide race to Justice Brian Hagedorn.
Filed the dissent. A separation-of-powers dispute over who controls major Department of Justice settlements. Neubauer argued the statute drew the line where the words said it did. The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed unanimously—7-0—reversing her District II colleagues and adopting her dissent's reasoning in 2025 WI 23.
When the state Department of Justice settles a big lawsuit, who has to sign off—the attorney general or the legislature's budget committee? The majority on Neubauer's panel said the legislature's committee had broad veto power. Neubauer dissented. She said the law gave the committee a narrower role than the majority was claiming. The Wisconsin Supreme Court took the case and agreed with Neubauer 7-0. On this specific case, she read the law correctly, and every justice—conservative and liberal—agreed.
Filed the dissent. The major PFAS-contamination case, asking whether the state could enforce the Spills Law against polluters without first writing formal rules. Neubauer read "hazardous substance" plainly. The Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted that reading 5-2 in 2025 WI 26, reversing her colleagues.
PFAS are "forever chemicals" that don't break down in water and have been linked to health problems. Wisconsin's Spills Law lets the state Department of Natural Resources go after polluters who release "hazardous substances." The majority on Neubauer's panel said the agency had to write formal rules first. Neubauer disagreed. She said the law was already clear. The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed with her 5-2. Her reading of the law won out, even though her own panel ruled the other way.
Filed the dissents. Two more cases—one on how high-school athletic association rules should be interpreted, the other on what counts as "any other offense" under employment-discrimination law. The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed District II 5-2 in both, and the reversals tracked Neubauer's dissents.
Two more cases where Neubauer broke from her District II colleagues. The first asked whether courts can review decisions made by Wisconsin's high-school athletic association. The second asked what kinds of past behavior employers can consider before deciding to fire someone. In both cases the majority went one way; Neubauer dissented. The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed both opinions 5-2 along lines that matched Neubauer's dissents. On these two cases, she got the closer read of the law.
Filed the dissent. An election-integrity group asked Walworth County for records of voters declared ineligible because they had been found mentally incompetent. The majority, written by Judge Lazar and joined by Judge Grogan, ordered the records released. Neubauer would have blocked the release. She argued in a footnote that the group had not shown any actual problem with the voter rolls. The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected her position.
An election-watchdog group wanted to see records of people who had been removed from the voter list because a court ruled they could not handle their own affairs. The group wanted to make sure those people had not voted. The majority said the records were public and ordered them released. Neubauer disagreed. She said the records should stay private and that the group had not shown a real problem with the rolls. The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed the case on a procedural rule, but the practical outcome left the records confidential, the way Neubauer wanted.
Authored the majorities. Routine consumer-finance and probate work—competent and uncontroversial, but neither shows the distinctive textual discipline that defines her dissent record this term. The pattern of her record is in dissent, not in the opinions she signed for the majority.
These were everyday cases—a consumer-finance dispute and an estate question. Neubauer wrote the lead opinions for her panels. The work is solid but not landmark. Neither case raised a new question of law or split the panel. Where her record stands out is not in cases like these, but in the dissents she files when she breaks from her colleagues.