Where Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Crawford, Schimel stand on issues

In less than two weeks, Wisconsin voters will cast the last ballots to decide who to elect to the state Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in July.

In doing so, voters might also set the direction for such major issues as the legalization of abortion and the rights of public employees.

The two candidates in the April 1 election are Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge and former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel. 

The barbs they’ve traded and the attack ads their campaigns and supporters have aired have sometimes obscured or exaggerated the candidates’ actual statements and platforms.Here is what each of these candidates has said publicly throughout the race on multiple key issues facing the court:

Abortion

The state Supreme Court is currently debating whether an 1849 law, thought by some to ban abortions in most cases, can stand. Those in support of a ban say the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022 means the Wisconsin law is back in effect. Those who brought a lawsuit challenging the law argue that while Roe was in effect, the Wisconsin Legislature passed more recent laws that do not hold such strict limitations on abortion. The court heard arguments last fall on the case but has yet to issue an opinion. 

That case is one of two before the court that could drastically change the landscape of abortion access in Wisconsin. The state Supreme Court has also accepted, but has yet to schedule arguments for, a case brought by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin that argues the Wisconsin Constitution holds a right to bodily autonomy and therefore protects the right to an abortion. 

Susan Crawford: Crawford has not issued a stance on the validity of the 1849 law nor whether she thinks the state Constitution protects the right to abortion. She has said she will not discuss cases currently under consideration by the court she hopes to join.

However, the Dane County judge represented Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin during her career as a lawyer and has defended that legal work. Planned Parenthood, among other services, is the primary provider of abortions in Wisconsin.

“I am proud of the work I did as a lawyer,” Crawford said during a March 12 debate with Schimel. “I was standing up in court fighting for the rights of women and their doctors to make those critical decisions about health care.”

Brad Schimel: On multiple occasions, Schimel has noted that he considers the 1849 ban a “valid” law. The former Republican attorney general noted during the March 12 debate that his previous statements on the case might be moot even if he’s elected, because the current liberal majority of the Supreme Court will likely rule on the abortion-ban case before he would take the bench.  

Schimel said during the debate that the word “abortion” does not appear in the Wisconsin Constitution and that those arguing the case would have to make a “creative” legal argument to show where that right is implied. 

While Crawford represented Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin in the past, Schimel signed onto a legal paper with Wisconsin Right to Life, an anti-abortion political group, in 2012 anticipating the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade which took place 10 years later. The legal paper contended that Wisconsin's 1849 law would ban abortion statewide if federal protections were to be overturned and that keeping the statute in place was the best way to achieve abortion restrictions. 

Act 10

The debate over Act 10, the 2011 law that restricted the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions, has influenced the Supreme Court race. That’s because a case challenging core parts of the law is making its way through the court system and seems destined to wind up in the high court.

Brad Schimel: Schimel’s campaign has criticized Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost’s ruling striking down large parts of Act 10 as unconstitutional. In a statement, Schimel’s campaign said the decision is “the Left using the justice system to satisfy their donors and dismantle laws they don't like.”

Schimel never had to defend Act 10 in court while he was attorney general, which coincided with the administration of former Gov. Scott Walker, the architect of the law. But he has said he would have if necessary.

“My job as attorney general was to defend Wisconsin law, not to pick and choose which laws I like or didn't like,” he said during the debate last week.

Conservative groups, including Americans for Prosperity, have made preserving Act 10 a core part of their campaign efforts backing Schimel.

Susan Crawford: Crawford worked on an ultimately unsuccessful 2011 challenge to Act 10 while in private practice. At the time, she said the law was unconstitutional and “aimed at crippling public employee unions.” She also has been backed by the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state teacher’s union that launched the most recent lawsuit.

More recently, Crawford has said she would review any Act 10-related litigation that might come before the court before deciding whether to recuse herself from the case.

“It would depend on the specific facts of the case,” she said during the debate.

Elections

A range of potential election law issues could come before the court in the years to come. And the Supreme Court race is featured on the same ballot as a referendum question about Wisconsin’s voter ID law.

Voters will be asked on April 1 to decide whether to amend the state Constitution to add the requirement to present a photo ID when voting. Republican legislators have said the constitutional amendment is necessary to prevent the state Supreme Court from striking down the mandate, which is already in effect for Wisconsin elections.

Susan Crawford: Crawford worked on a 2011 lawsuit challenging voter ID’s provisions and said in 2018 that it was a “draconian” policy.

More recently, however, Crawford told a Milwaukee-area TV station she felt revisions to the law to allow residents to obtain a free photo ID for voting changed things.

“The law that exists today is no longer the law that I was in court challenging,” Crawford said. 

She added that it was a “mistake to confuse” the lawsuit for her personal viewpoints and that while she had her own opinions on voter ID, she didn’t wish to air them publicly for fear that fallout from the constitutional amendment could wind up before the Supreme Court.

On another election-related issue, Schimel has criticized Crawford for addressing Democratic Party donors in a call after an email promoting the call billed the race as “chance to put two more (U.S.) House seats in play for 2026.” Crawford said the message, which was not sent by her campaign, was not “an appropriate way to announce a judicial candidate” and that she did not discuss the issue of congressional redistricting with donors.

Brad Schimel: Schimel defended the voter ID law in court and later told a conservative radio host he believed the law was important to ensure President Donald Trump won Wisconsin in the 2016 presidential election.

During the debate last week, Schimel said he planned to vote in favor of the amendment.

“What the law does is it favors integrity, so that the votes of the people of Wisconsin are accurately reflected in the totals that are reported on election night,” Schimel said.

Touching on election integrity issues that Republicans have long raised, Schimel has said he will accept the results of the April 1 election but also told a conservative talk radio host that his supporters should vote early as “the best insulation we have against any potential fraud” or if election officials in Milwaukee “find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines.”

The late-night tabulation of absentee ballots in Milwaukee is not a sign of fraud but is related to state law that prevents election officials from pre-processing absentee ballots before Election Day.

Judicial recusal

Both candidates have been asked if they would step aside and not hear cases involving major campaign donors. 

The state’s judicial code of conduct says justices should recuse themselves “whenever the facts and circumstances the judge knows or reasonably should know raise reasonable question of the judge's ability to act impartially.” 

State statute requires judges to step aside only if they were an attorney or witness in that particular case, they have a family member involved in the case, or if the judge has a personal or financial stake in the issue.

Brad Schimel: Schimel said during last week’s debate that he wasn’t sure if he would step aside in a case involving Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer owned by Elon Musk, as he hadn’t reviewed the lawsuit yet. Political action committees tied to Musk have spent millions in support of Schimel.

Speaking with reporters last week, Schimel said he thinks “we should examine” strengthening the state’s judicial code of conduct on recusal for Supreme Court justices. 

He also said it would be worth exploring whether to bring on a Wisconsin Court of Appeals justice to replace a Supreme Court justice who steps aside in order to avoid a split 3-3 decision, where the lower court ruling would stand.

“We should make it a situation where if a justice does recuse, they're not worried that ‘Now I've left this so that there can't be a decision in the case if it's an even split,’” Schimel said. “So I think there are things worth looking at, absolutely.”

Susan Crawford: Crawford said during last week’s debate that she believed “voters have to trust justices under the current rules” but said she would consider recusing in cases involving the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which has given millions to Crawford’s campaign, “if I believe I cannot be fair and impartial.”

While Crawford said she has held herself to a high ethical standard, she pointed to ethical breaches on the U.S. Supreme Court that she said could bring down people’s trust in the judiciary.

“I would welcome petitions or proposals to strengthen and improve the recusal rules,” she said. “I think they can always be improved.”

Spending in judicial races

The topic of campaign spending played a key role in the debate between Crawford and Schimel this month, with billionaires on both ends of the political spectrum spending big bucks in a race that will decide the ideological makeup of the court and has already broken the previous spending record set in the 2023 Supreme Court election between Justice Janet Protasiewicz and her opponent Dan Kelly.

On the right, Trump’s billionaire government efficiency adviser Elon Musk has funded two political groups that have collectively spent more than $10 million in support of the Schimel campaign. On the left, liberal megadonor George Soros has provided the Crawford campaign with $1 million. 

Susan Crawford: During the March 12 debate, Crawford slammed the Schimel campaign for accepting money from the world’s richest man, who has now closely aligned himself with the right-wing Make America Great Again movement. 

Crawford argued Musk “has basically taken over Brad Schimel’s campaign.”

“He’s got paid canvassers who are knocking on doors handing out flyers that say support the Trump agenda, put Brad Schimel on the Supreme Court,” Crawford said during the debate. 

Brad Schimel: Soros has long ired conservatives and been the source of right-wing criticism and conspiracy theories. 

Now the progressive donor’s financial backing of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which supports Crawford’s campaign, has brought Soros into the debate over campaign spending in the race for Supreme Court. 

“Susan Crawford takes her marching orders from George Soros, (Illinois Gov.) JB Pritzker, anti-ICE sheriffs, and Defund the Police radicals,” Schimel’s campaign wrote on X in early March. “Which side are you on?”

Editors note: This story was corrected to reflect that candidate Brad Schimel did not represent Wisconsin Right to Life in Court, instead signing onto a legal white paper with the organization in 2012 in support of Wisconsin's 1849 law thought by many to ban abortions in nearly all cases.