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Madison — Threebolts of legal lightning — affecting union bargaining, election law and same-sex couples — will finally come down Thursday morning in what promises to be a historic day for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Set for release are long-awaited opinions on whether Gov. Scott Walker's labor law is constitutional, whether voters can be made to show photo IDs and whether the state can run a registry for same-sex partners. On the question of photo ID at the polls, the court is ruling on two consolidated lawsuits challenging the same law, meaning essentially four significant legal cases in all being decided Thursday.

In his more than three decades trying cases before the Supreme Court, Madison attorney Lester Pines said he can't remember such a momentous day, with rulings that could each affect thousands of Wisconsinites.

"You can ask any practitioner, nobody's ever seen this many high-profile cases being decided on the same day," said Pines, a Democrat, who's had direct involvement in three of the four lawsuits.

Janine Geske, a Marquette University law professor and former state Supreme Court justice, agreed with Pines, adding that late-arriving rulings such as these are a sign of a divided court in which some justices are either dissenting or, possibly, writing concurring opinions.

"There's more back and forth" in those time-consuming cases, she said.

The decisions, coming out just as this year's midterm elections heat up, are fraught with political implications. As governor, Walker, a Republican, is one of the official defendants in all four cases. His re-election challenger, Mary Burke, serves on the Madison School Board, the employer of the teachers suing the state in the Act 10 case. By its very nature, the issue of voter ID can influence elections.

Some observers expect both conservatives and liberals to get at least one ruling in their favor.

After more than three years of litigation, the court's seven justices on Thursday would put to rest the last of the major legal disputes over 2011's Act 10, Walker's law repealing most union bargaining for most public employees.

The state court's decisions on the voter ID and domestic partner registry, however, could still be overtaken by decisions in separate but related cases in federal court.

Three big issues

Here's what to expect:

■Act 10. Walker and Republicans in the Legislature in 2011 approved strict limitations on collective bargaining for most public workers, setting off an explosion of litigation. In the lawsuits by unions and others, Act 10 has suffered setbacks in trial courts but so far has been upheld on every appeal.

In this case, opponents filed several challenges to the law and a Dane County judge in September 2012 found major portions of Act 10 unconstitutional. The state Supreme Court agreed to take the case last year without having the state District 4 Court of Appeals first rule on it.

The two sides have disputed whether Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colás' contempt-of-court ruling affected all public-sector unions or just the two that brought the case. As that fight played out, Colás ruled in October that because of his earlier decision, Walker's employment commissioners were in contempt of court for applying parts of Act 10 to other unions.

The Supreme Court held oral arguments in November on the case and 10 days later issued a 5-2 decision reversing the contempt-of-court order. They will next decide the merits of the case — whether Act 10 violates workers' rights to free assembly and equal protection under the law.

This isn't the first time that a higher court has considered a challenge to Walker's law.

The state Supreme Court ruled in June 2011 that lawmakers could easily avoid the state's open meetings law and did not violate that statute in passing the labor limits. And the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Act 10 in its entirety in two challenges in federal court.

■Voter ID. The state Supreme Court will also rule Thursday on two different cases testing whether a law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls is constitutional. In one case, the law has been struck down by a trial court and in the other it has been upheld by an appellate court.

Either way, the Supreme Court's ruling should have little immediate effect because a federal judge in April found the ID requirement violated the U.S. Constitution and also blocked its enforcement. That ruling is being appealed to the federal 7th Circuit in Chicago.

To reinstate the voter ID law, Wisconsin officials have to overcome the legal challenges in both state court and federal court.

Lawmakers and Walker approved the voter ID law in 2011, but it was in effect for just one election — a low-turnout primary in February 2012 — before Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan halted the law.

That case was brought by the Milwaukee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera. Flanagan sided with them in finding the voter ID law infringes on the right to vote because of the difficulties some people have had in getting photo IDs.

Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen appealed the decision to the District 2 Court of Appeals in Waukesha, but the state Supreme Court took the case from that court before it heard arguments on it.

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin brought a separate challenge to the law, arguing that lawmakers did not have the power under the state constitution to impose a photo ID requirement on voters.

The state constitution says people can vote if they are 18 or older, U.S. citizens and residents of Wisconsin. Beyond that, the league contends, the state constitution allows the Legislature to exclude felons and mentally incompetent people from voting but not other classes of people.

In March 2012, Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess agreed with the league and issued an injunction halting the law. He found it created a new category of people who cannot vote.

Van Hollen appealed, and the Madison-based Court of Appeals in May 2013 overruled Niess' decision. That court ruled that requiring a photo ID is not an additional qualification for voting but is simply a means of determining whether those who come to the polls are eligible to vote.

The Supreme Court is considering both voter ID cases together.

■Same-sex partnerships. Less than two months after a federal judge found Wisconsin's ban on gay marriage violates the U.S. Constitution, the state Supreme Court will weigh in on a 2009 law providing limited benefits to gay and lesbian couples.

At the center of both cases is a 2006 state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions that was approved by Wisconsin voters, 59% to 41%.

The state case on the more limited domestic partner benefits will have effects for same-sex couples in Wisconsin as long as federal courts are wrestling with the ongoing litigation over gay marriage.

If Wisconsin's marriage ban and those of other states are ultimately struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, then this state domestic partners case will be moot. But if the federal courts ultimately uphold the state bans, then the state partner benefits case could have a more lasting effect here.

In 2009, Gov. Jim Doyle and Democrats then in charge of the Legislature approved a measure providing hospital visitation rights and some other benefits to same-sex couples who registered their domestic partnerships with counties.

In 2010, Julaine Appling of Wisconsin Family Action — a social conservative group that four years earlier had helped push through the gay marriage ban — sued over the registries, arguing they violated the state constitution by approximating marriage.

Walker and Van Hollen agreed and refused to defend the law. Defenders of the partner benefits took up the case, arguing that they stopped well short of marriage in areas such as adoption rights.

Appling's lawsuit was rejected in 2011 by Dane County Circuit Judge Daniel Moeser and in 2012 by the state District 4 Court of Appeals.

In the federal litigation, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb struck down the 2006 same-sex marriage ban last month and then stayed her decision a week later. During that week of legal limbo more than 500 same-sex couples wed in Wisconsin.

Walker and Van Hollen appealed Crabb's decision to the federal 7th Circuit. The 7th Circuit consolidated the Wisconsin case with a similar Indiana case, and a three-judge panel is scheduled to hear the combined cases on Aug. 26.

In similar federal cases, two other appellate courts have struck down same-sex marriage bans in Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia.