Overview
Ten days before her eighteenth birthday, a legal orphan on track to graduate high school filed her own petition asking a circuit court to keep her in protective services long enough to finish. Waupaca County’s corporation counsel appeared, asserted party status, contested the petition, and said it could not be ready for a hearing. The petition was dismissed. She turned eighteen with nothing.1
The court of appeals held that Wis. Stat. § 48.09(5) does not make corporation counsel a party to a CHIPS action under § 48.13 when corporation counsel is not the petitioner. The county seeks reversal.
What You Should Know
Four things to carry into the decision
- The whole case is one sentence. Section 48.09(5) directs that the interests of the public shall be represented in any matter arising under § 48.13 by corporation counsel or the district attorney. It confers a duty of representation. It never uses the word “party.”2
- The asymmetry drives the court of appeals’ reasoning. Chapter 48 says who must receive notice when corporation counsel files. Nothing tells anyone to notify corporation counsel when a child or parent files.3
- The county’s strongest ground is structural, not sympathetic: without corporation counsel, a jurisdictional hearing can proceed with no adverse party, leaving venue, jurisdiction, and the sufficiency of the petition to a judge who is also the gatekeeper.
- Watch the bench. The opinion under review was authored by Judge Taylor, now Justice Taylor, and a justice referred from the bench to six people in black robes.4
The Two Readings
Seven words carry the case: the public’s interests “shall be represented . . . in any matter arising under” § 48.13.
“Any matter” means any matter
The public’s interest in a CHIPS case does not disappear when someone else files the petition. Without corporation counsel, a jurisdictional hearing proceeds with no adverse party at all.
It confers a duty, not party status
The provision assigns representation; it never says “party.” Chapter 48’s guardianship provisions name the county expressly and give it notice expressly — the legislature knew how to say it and did not say it here.
What Happened
A justice recited her history from the bench. Click any step for detail.
Born
A failed placement with an aunt in Georgia, then a move to Wisconsin with a grandmother, where she witnessed domestic violence and was abused by a step-grandparent. Three foster homes followed.
Adopted into an abusive home
She suffered physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect.
A legal orphan
The termination of her adoptive parents’ rights left her, in the justice’s phrase, a legal orphan with the Department as her guardian.
On track despite the record
She was on track to graduate, working part-time, and admitted to college. The guardianship order would terminate on her eighteenth birthday.
She files her own CHIPS petition
Ten days before that birthday, under § 48.13(9), seeking services through graduation.
The county appears and contests
Corporation counsel asserted that § 48.09(5) made it a party, contested the petition, raised a venue objection, and said it could not be prepared for a hearing in the time available. The circuit court (Nielsen, J.) agreed the county was a party.
The case never reached the merits
The petition was dismissed. The court of appeals, District IV, later reversed. The underlying controversy is moot as to S.G. The statutory question is not.
Legal Background
Chapter 48 declares that the best interests of the child are of paramount consideration, and § 48.01 sets out purposes that include providing services while avoiding duplication and waste of effort and money by public and private agencies. The county leans on that last clause. Its opponents read it as a direction about how services are delivered, not a license to oppose jurisdiction.
The interpretive question is narrow and textual. Section 48.09(5) assigns representation. Sections 48.255 and 48.27 govern who receives the petition and notice of hearings, and everyone agrees that some who receive notice, including placement providers and court-appointed special advocates, are not parties.
The county also points outside chapter 48, to the district attorney’s authority in civil actions and to the provision making corporation counsel’s powers concurrent with the district attorney’s.5 S.G. points to chapter 48’s guardianship provisions, where corporation counsel is named a party expressly and given notice expressly, and argues the legislature knew how to say it and did not say it here.
That concession about notice cuts both ways: it defeats any inference that notice equals party status, and it weakens the court of appeals’ inference that the absence of notice defeats it.
Key Exchanges
Summarized from the argument rather than quoted. Speakers are identified as the argument record identifies them.
Observed that crime victims in Wisconsin hold a constitutional right to notice and still are not parties, and said she had difficulty seeing how party status follows from a statute providing only that the interests of the public shall be represented.
Laid out three possibilities — corporation counsel can never be a party, is always a party, or the narrower question actually presented: whether the trial court erred in holding that the statute authorized party status here.
Walked through what happened — the county objected, was made a party, intervened, then said it could not be ready in time, and the petition was dismissed leaving her without services — and asked how any of that could possibly have served her best interest.
Noted that judges do not typically hold hearings that reach a legal conclusion with only one side presenting evidence, testimony and witnesses, and called the prospect unusual.
Zoom In
Justice Hagedorn offered the exit. The court of appeals said corporation counsel can never be a party; the county says it always is. The question actually presented is narrower.
A reading sits between the poles: § 48.09(5) confers a right to be heard on the public interest without conferring party status, leaving the mechanics to the circuit court. Counsel for the county conceded that reading is available.
It resolves the case without announcing that counties are always at counsel table or that they can never speak before disposition.
The court of appeals’ reliance on the absence of notice is weaker than it appears, because both sides agree that notice and party status do not track each other under this chapter.
Pressed on cost, counsel retreated to the position that it is one consideration and never the paramount one, and conceded she would not herself have objected here.
An argument the advocate will not defend on the facts of her own case is not one the Court is likely to adopt as a rule for every case.
What’s Next
The decision will not change S.G.’s case. It will govern how every county handles privately filed CHIPS petitions.
Party status, or a right to be heard?
The narrow disposition Justice Hagedorn sketched lets the Court honor the mandatory text without installing an adversary in every petition a child files.
What the Court does with the notice gap
A holding for the county either reads a notice requirement into the chapter or leaves counties dependent on judges volunteering the information, which is what happened here. Either outcome is an invitation to the legislature.
The composition of the bench
Justice Taylor authored the opinion under review and sat on the panel in Sierra Club, argued the same term. A six-justice court raises the prospect of an even division, which would leave the court of appeals decision standing without a precedential opinion.
Endnotes & Authorities · 5 citations
- In the Interest of S.G.: S.G. v. Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and Waupaca County, 2025 WI App 32, No. 2024AP472 (Ct. App. Apr. 3, 2025) (Taylor, J., joined by Kloppenburg, P.J., and Blanchard, J.), reversing the Waupaca County Circuit Court (Nielsen, J.). Angela F. Boelter argued for Waupaca County; Matthew W. Giesfeldt and Devon M. Lee, assistant state public defenders, Madison, for S.G. The Department filed no response brief. Cir. Ct. No. 2023JC7. Review granted March 12, 2026; argued September 15, 2026.
- Wis. Stat. § 48.09(5) (representation of the interests of the public); § 48.13 (children in need of protection or services); § 48.13(9); § 48.01 (purposes).
- Wis. Stat. §§ 48.25, 48.255, 48.27 (petition, contents, notice); §§ 48.30, 48.31, 48.33. Authority relied on below includes Portage County v. J.W.K., 2019 WI 54; State ex rel. Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane County, 2004 WI 58; and State v. Shirley E., 2006 WI 129.
- Justice Chris Taylor served on the court of appeals, District IV, before joining this Court. She authored S.G. below and sat on the panel in Sierra Club v. DNR, 2025 WI App 39. Her non-participation here has not been confirmed: the Court’s pending-cases table records no non-participation for either No. 2024AP472 or No. 2024AP673, because it does not track recusals. The inference rests on her authorship below, her panel seat in Sierra Club, her silence at both arguments, and a justice’s reference from the bench to six people in black robes. Confirming it would require the Court’s own order or the recording.
- Wis. Stat. § 978.05(6); § 59.42 (corporation counsel; powers concurrent with the district attorney).