The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected on Sunday night Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul’s lawsuit to stop Elon Musk and America PAC from executing a planned giveaway on Sunday night of $1 million each to two attendees at a town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The order came just minutes before the event — backing conservative candidate Brad Schimel — was set to start.
Notably, the court also rejected a bid from Musk’s lawyers to ask two justices, who had campaigned for Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford, to recuse themselves.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk boards Air Force One with President Donald Trump as they departs for Philadelphia, from Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, New Jersey, March 22, 2025.
Nathan Howard/Reuters
The ruling came after an appeals court on Saturday denied Kaul’s emergency motion to stop the giveaway from taking place.
Kaul wrote in his initial filing on Friday that he was asking for emergency relief to stop Musk and America PAC “from further promoting a million-dollar giveaway to attendees of a planned event on Sunday, March 30, 2025, and prohibiting Respondents from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote.”
However, the judge assigned to the case, the Honorable Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voigt, refused to hear the lawsuit before Sunday’s Green Bay rally with Musk — prompting Kaul’s emergency motion asking a Court of Appeals to take action.
After that emergency motion was rejected, Kaul appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to step in on Sunday.
Lawyers for Elon Musk and America PAC then filed motions for the recusal of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices Rebecca Frank Dallet and Jill J. Karofsky.
They argued that because Dallet and Karofsky campaigned for Crawford, and Crawford has been critical of Musk, “to avoid any potential perceptions of bias and manifestations of possible bias, Justices Dallet and Karofsky should decline to participate in consideration of this matter.”
The lawyers also framed the planned Sunday night giveaways as “spokesperson agreements” for spokespeople for the PAC.
In the initial lawsuit, shared by Kaul’s office, Kaul argued that “Musk’s announcement of his intention to pay $1 million to two Wisconsin electors who attend his event on Sunday night, specifically conditioned on their having voted in the upcoming April 3, 2025, Wisconsin Supreme Court election, is a blatant attempt to violate” state law, which “forbids anyone from offering or promising to give anything of value to an elector in order to induce the elector to go to the polls, vote or refrain from voting, or vote for a particular person.”
The suit asked for a restraining order “prohibiting Defendants from any further promotion of the million-dollar gifts to attendees of the planned Sunday March 30, 2025,” as well as a temporary restraining order “prohibiting Defendants from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote,” and injunctive relief to “restrain and prohibit all actions by Defendants taken in furtherance of a planned violation” of the state law.
So far, two political groups aligned with Musk — America PAC and Building America’s Future — have poured nearly $20 million into supporting Schimel for the open seat.
The world’s richest man has used cash giveaways in the past, including a controversial $1 million sweepstakes offered to voters in swing states during last year’s election cycle as part of an effort to boost President Donald Trump’s chances of winning in those states.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court election, on Tuesday, has generally become the center of a political firestorm, and has become the most expensive state supreme court race in American history, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
