Recently, a Madison school board member asked me and a number of other special education advocates how to best measure educational progress for children with disabilities. I responded that ultimately, it had to be measured individually, but when examining specific schools or an entire school district, key data points are useful including: suspension rates, graduation rates and reading and math test scores.
As we live in a data driven society, measuring progress is often reduced to examining numbers. While those numbers are often helpful, sometimes it is important to step back from the numbers to examine cultural progress in the way we talk about issues. Right now, the current campaign for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court provides some important lessons.
When Justice Patrick Crooks passed away last year, Gov. Scott Walker appointed Rebecca Bradley to replace him even though she was an announced candidate for that seat (Crooks had previously announced his intention to retire). This was Governor Walker’s 3rd judicial appointment of Bradley since he appointed her to her first judgeship in Milwaukee County in 2012, having then appointed her to the Court of Appeals in May, 2015, just months before he appointed her to the Supreme Court.
In her application for the Wisconsin Supreme Court position, she was asked to, “List any published books or articles.” She lists 16 publications dating back to 2001. Over the past week, controversial articles she wrote as a columnist for the Marquette University newspaper in the early 1990s have come to light, which she did not list in her application. In these articles she disparages gays and people with AIDS, questions the American electorate’s intelligence for electing Bill Clinton, defends the Marquette University’s Native American mascot (which has since been changed), and asserted that women play a role in date rape.
She initially claimed that she was horribly embarrassed by her college columns, and later offered an apology, offering assurances that her views on gays have changed since that time.
Of course, ultimately, the voters will decide on April 5th whether Justice Bradley’s college columns should matter 24 years later when they decide whether to vote for her or her opponent Court of Appeals Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg. But, watching this controversy unfold helps me realize how much progress our society has made when it comes to gay rights issues. The sad fact is that in 1992, it was acceptable for Rebecca Bradley to write hateful columns about people who are gay and those who suffer from AIDS in her college newspaper. In 2016, nobody, including her, is defending those hateful writings. They are now considered so universally offensive, that a sitting state Supreme Court judge has publicly declared that she is “horribly embarrassed” and must apologize for those hateful writings. In this particular matter, society has evolved in a positive way.
Of course, Rebecca Bradley wrote other and more recent publications for which she has not apologized and cannot excuse herself as the writings of an immature college student. In 2006, she wrote an opinion piece for MKE Magazine, entitled, Pharmacists are guaranteed the right to exercise their religious beliefs. In that column, she supports a bill that the Wisconsin legislature did not pass, which would have allowed pharmacists to refuse to provide the medicine known as “Plan B” to customers if it did not conform to their religious beliefs and furthermore, did not require objecting pharmacists to refer the customer elsewhere to fill their prescriptions. At the end of her column, she writes:
Rebecca recommends visiting http://www.prolifewisconsin.org and Pharmacists For Life International, http://www.pfli.org, for more info about getting involved.
When this issue was brought to light, Rebecca Bradley declined to weigh in, due to the potential for the issue to come before the high court.
“Justice Bradley believes it is the role of the Legislature to make the law and the role of a justice to apply it,” said spokeswoman Madison Wiberg. “Due to the potential for this issue to come in front of the state Supreme Court, it would be improper for Justice Bradley to give an opinion at this time.”
As an attorney who has been practicing for over 30 years, I am often bemused by judicial candidates when they decide which issues they can comment on, and which they cannot.I do not consider it progress when Rebecca Bradley apologizes for clearly embarrassing writings that she did not reveal in her application for our state’s highest court, but then refuses to comment on much more current writing claiming that it could come before the Supreme Court. All issues, including the issues of gay rights, can come to the Supreme Court. Justice Bradley should not be given the luxury of choosing which of her own writings, especially more recent writing written as a practicing attorney, she can comment on.
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For more information on how Jeff Spitzer-Resnick can help you accomplish effective, progressive systems change contact him by visiting his web site: Systems Change Consulting. In the interest of full disclosure, he has publicly endorsed Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg in the upcoming race for Wisconsin Supreme Court.
