Senate Bill 846 aims to establish a citizenship requirement for employment as a law enforcement officer or tribal law enforcement officer in Wisconsin. Currently, the law mandates that deputy sheriffs and police officers at the county and municipal levels must be U.S. citizens, but this requirement does not extend to state-level law enforcement officers. The proposed legislation seeks to close this gap by ensuring that all law enforcement personnel, including state traffic patrol officers and conservation wardens, must be U.S. citizens.

The bill introduces new legal language by creating a provision under section 165.85 (4) (a) 2m., which explicitly states that no individual may be employed as a law enforcement officer or tribal law enforcement officer unless they are a citizen of the United States. This change reinforces the existing citizenship requirement for local law enforcement and expands it to include state-level officers, thereby standardizing the citizenship criteria across all law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin.