Rebecca Lynn Grassl Bradley (born August 2, 1971) is an American lawyer, and justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, serving since 2015. She has been a state judge in Wisconsin since 2012. She was appointed to the Supreme Court by Governor Scott Walker in 2015, and won election to a 10-year term in 2016.
In 1992, while she was a student at Marquette University, she wrote several columns for the Marquette Tribune critical of homosexuality and comparing abortion to the Holocaust and slavery. In the columns, written under her maiden name, Rebecca Grassl, she wrote, "One will be better off contracting AIDS than developing cancer, because those afflicted with the politically correct disease will get all the funding," and "How sad that the lives of degenerate drug addicts and queers are valued more than the innocent lives of more prevalent ailments."[4][5] She also wrote, "But the homosexuals and drug addicts who do essentially kill themselves and others through their own behavior deservedly receive none of my sympathy",[6][5] as well as "Heterosexual sex is very healthy in a loving relationship; homosexual sex, however, kills."[7] In another article, Bradley compared abortion to a "time in history when Jews were treated as nonhumans and tortured and murdered" and "a time in history when blacks were treated as something less than human".[8] She apologized in 2016 after her columns were discovered by the group One Wisconsin Now.[9]
In December 2012, Walker appointed Bradley to the Milwaukee CountyCircuit Court, where she served in the children's court division.[2][10] She was elected to a six-year term on the court in April 2013, receiving substantial support from the conservative Wisconsin Club for Growth and defeating her future fellow Supreme Court colleague Janet Protasiewicz by a 53–47% margin.[10]
Wisconsin Supreme Court
2015 appointment
In May 2015, Walker elevated Bradley to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals to fill a vacancy caused by the death of Judge Ralph Adam Fine. After the death of Justice N. Patrick Crooks in 2015, Bradley was appointed by Walker to serve as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the remainder of Crooks' term.[14]
2016 Supreme Court election
Bradley (left) at her 2016 election
After Crooks' death, Bradley, JoAnne Kloppenburg (who narrowly lost a race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2011), and Joe Donald each announced their candidacy for the seat in the 2016 election. In the February 16 primary, Bradley edged Kloppenburg 44.7–43.2%, moving the two of them on to the general election in an even race.[15]
Bradley's homophobic writings as an undergraduate, published in 1992 in Marquette University's student newspaper, stirred controversy during the race.[16][17] She had written letters to the editor and a column for the Marquette Tribune, in which she stated she held no sympathy for AIDS patients because they were "degenerates" who had effectively chosen to kill themselves. She also referred to gay people as "queers".[18][19] She called Americans who voted for Bill Clinton "either totally stupid or entirely evil".[20] She blasted supporters of abortion as murderers, and compared abortion to the Holocaust and slavery.[18] She attacked feminists as "angry, militant, man-hating lesbians who abhor the traditional family" and defended Camille Paglia, who had written in a 1991 column that "A girl who lets herself get dead drunk at a fraternity party is a fool. A girl who goes upstairs alone with a brother at a fraternity party is an idiot."[21][22] Bradley wrote that Paglia had "legitimately suggested that women play a role in date rape".[22] Bradley apologized for her student writings in 2016, shortly after the controversy arose.[23]
Pre-election polls showed Bradley with a slight lead, but with a significant portion of the electorate still undecided.[24] She was projected as the winner by a 53–47% margin on election night, and she quoted Winston Churchill at the end of her victory speech: "There is nothing more exhilarating than being shot at without result."[25]
Tenure
In June 2019, Bradley wrote the majority opinion for the Wisconsin Supreme Court when conservatives on the court upheld a series of laws, passed by the Republican-led Wisconsin legislature and Republican Governor Scott Walker during a lame-duck session, limiting the powers of the incoming Democratic Governor (Tony Evers) and Attorney General (Josh Kaul).[26][27]
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she dissented from a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision ordering the postponement of jury trials and the suspension of in-person court proceedings for public health reasons.[28] In April 2020, during the pandemic, she joined the conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in striking down Governor Evers' order to postpone an April 7 Wisconsin election due to the public health risks of the coronavirus.[29] She voted in person on April 2, although casting a ballot in person before the date of the election is considered an absentee vote in Wisconsin. Examination of Justice Bradley's voting record demonstrates that she voted in person on Election Day in 4 of the 5 previous elections.[30] In May 2020, she compared the stay-at-home orders to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and labeled them "tyrannic".[31] In November 2020, while COVID-19 cases were surging in Wisconsin, she was in the Wisconsin Supreme Court's conservative majority which prevented the City of Racine Public Health Department from ordering school closures.[32] In the fallout of the 2020 presidential election, Bradley issued a dissenting minority opinion in the unsuccessful case brought by the Trump campaign to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Wisconsin. While agreeing with at least some of the Trump campaign's allegations, none of the dissenting judges (including Bradley) would say what relief they thought should be given to Trump's campaign; instead, they merely agreed that Trump was right. Bradley's dissent called the majority's decision not to overturn the election "an indelible stain" that would cause "significant harm to the rule of law".[33]
In 2021, Bradley was the sole judge on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to rule in favor of a man who argued that his Second Amendment rights allowed him to brandish firearms while intoxicated and arguing with his roommates.[34] Bradley said that the conviction against the man "erodes a fundamental freedom".[34] In 2021, Bradley wrote a majority decision for the Wisconsin Supreme Court declining changes in district maps that favored Republicans. In her decision, Bradley wrote that questions about the redistricting maps "must be resolved through the political process and not by the judiciary".[35][36]
In the 2022 decision Teigen v. Wisconsin Election Commission, which held that ballot drop boxes are illegal under Wisconsin statutes, Bradley wrote "If elections are conducted outside of the law, the people have not conferred their consent on the government. Such elections are unlawful and their results are illegitimate."[37]Teigen was ultimately overturned by the Wisconsin Supreme Court on July 5, 2024, with Bradley authoring the dissenting opinion.[38]
^"Elections". Wisconsin Blue Book 2013-2014 (Report). Madison, Wisconsin: State of Wisconsin. 2013. pp. 876, 878. Archived from the original on January 1, 2020. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
^"Elections Results". Wisconsin Blue Book 2017-2018 (Report). Madison, Wisconsin: State of Wisconsin. 2017. pp. 508, 511. Archived from the original on January 1, 2020. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
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