Rebecca Bradley | |
|---|---|
 Bradley in 2023 | |
| Justice of theWisconsin Supreme Court | |
| Assumed office October 12, 2015 | |
| Appointed by | Scott Walker |
| Preceded by | N. Patrick Crooks |
| Judge of theWisconsin Court of Appeals District I | |
| In office May 2015 – October 12, 2015 | |
| Appointed by | Scott Walker |
| Preceded by | Ralph Adam Fine |
| Succeeded by | William W. Brash III |
| Judge of theMilwaukee CountyCircuit Court Branch 45 | |
| In office December 2012 – May 2015 | |
| Appointed by | Scott Walker |
| Succeeded by | Michelle Ackerman Havas |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Rebecca Lynn Grassl (1971-08-02)August 2, 1971 (age 54) |
| Party | Republican |
| Education | Marquette University (BA) University of Wisconsin, Madison (JD) |
| Website | Campaign website |
Rebecca Lynn Grassl Bradley (born August 2, 1971) is an American lawyer, and justice of theWisconsin Supreme Court, serving since 2015. She has been a state judge inWisconsin since 2012. She was appointed to the Supreme Court by GovernorScott Walker in 2015, and won election to a 10-year term in 2016. She has announced that she will not seek re-election in 2026, and her term in office is set to expire on July 31, 2026.
Rebecca Bradley was born Rebecca Lynn Grassl, on August 2, 1971, inMilwaukee, Wisconsin.[1] She attended the private, all-girlsDivine Savior Holy Angels High School.[1] She earned a BS in business administration and business economics fromMarquette University in 1993. She received her JD from theUniversity of Wisconsin Law School in Madison in 1996.[2][3]
In 1992, while she was a student atMarquette University, she wrote several columns for theMarquette Tribune critical ofhomosexuality and comparingabortion to theHolocaust andslavery. In the columns, written under hermaiden name, Rebecca Grassl, she wrote, "One will be better off contractingAIDS than developing cancer, because those afflicted with thepolitically correct disease will get all the funding," and "How sad that the lives of degenerate drug addicts andqueers 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 groupOne Wisconsin Now.[9]
From 1996 to 2012,[1] Bradley worked as an attorney at several Milwaukee law firms, specializing incommercial litigation andintellectual property law, and as a software company executive.[10][11] Considered a conservative, Bradley served as president of the MilwaukeeFederalist Society chapter and participated in theThomas More Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association.[12] Bradley was a contributor to the campaign of Wisconsin GovernorScott Walker, aRepublican.[13]
In December 2012, Walker appointed Bradley to theMilwaukee 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 conservativeWisconsin Club for Growth and defeating her future fellow Supreme Court colleagueJanet Protasiewicz by a 53–47% margin.[10]
In May 2015, Walker elevated Bradley to theWisconsin Court of Appeals to fill a vacancy caused by the death of JudgeRalph Adam Fine. After the death of JusticeN. 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]
After Crooks' death, Bradley,JoAnne Kloppenburg (who narrowly lost a race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2011), andJoe 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'shomophobic writings as an undergraduate, published in 1992 inMarquette University's student newspaper, stirred controversy during the race.[16][17] She had writtenletters to the editor and a column for theMarquette 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 forBill 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 attackedfeminists as "angry, militant, man-hatinglesbians who abhor the traditional family" and defendedCamille 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 indate 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 quotedWinston Churchill at the end of her victory speech: "There is nothing more exhilarating than being shot at without result."[25]
On April 5, 2025, Bradley announced that she planned to seek re-election to the court in 2026.[26] On August 29, 2025, after months of speculation due to nonexistent fundraising, Bradley announced that she has reversed her previous decision and would no longer seek reelection.[27]
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 alame-duck session, limiting the powers of the incoming Democratic Governor (Tony Evers) and Attorney General (Josh Kaul).[28][29]
During theCOVID-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.[30] 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.[31] She voted in person on April 2, although casting a ballot in person before the date of the election is considered anabsentee 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.[32] In May 2020, she compared the stay-at-home orders to theinternment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and labeled them "tyrannic".[33] 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.[34] In the fallout of the 2020 presidential election, Bradley issued a dissenting minority opinion in theunsuccessful case brought by theTrump campaign to overturn the2020 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".[35]
In 2021, Bradley was the sole judge on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to rule in favor of a man who argued that hisSecond Amendment rights allowed him to brandish firearms while intoxicated and arguing with his roommates.[36] Bradley said that the conviction against the man "erodes a fundamental freedom".[36] 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".[37][38]
In the 2022 decisionTeigen v. Wisconsin Election Commission, which held thatballot 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."[39]Teigen was ultimately overturned by the Wisconsin Supreme Court on July 5, 2024, with Bradley authoring thedissenting opinion.[40]
Bradley had a divorce in 2004.[41]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary election, February 19, 2013 | |||||
| Nonpartisan | Rebecca Bradley (incumbent) | 32,997 | 59.64% | ||
| Nonpartisan | Janet Claire Protasiewicz | 16,173 | 29.23% | ||
| Nonpartisan | Gil Urfer | 6,158 | 11.13% | ||
| Total votes | 55,328 | 100.0% | |||
| General election, April 2, 2013 | |||||
| Nonpartisan | Rebecca Bradley (incumbent) | 55,177 | 53.13% | ||
| Nonpartisan | Janet Claire Protasiewicz | 48,685 | 46.87% | ||
| Total votes | 103,862 | 100.0% | |||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary election, February 16, 2016 | |||||
| Nonpartisan | Rebecca Bradley (incumbent) | 251,823 | 44.61% | ||
| Nonpartisan | JoAnne Kloppenburg | 243,190 | 43.16% | ||
| Nonpartisan | M. Joseph Donald | 68,373 | 12.12% | ||
| Scattering | 631 | 0.11% | |||
| Total votes | 567,038 | 100.0% | |||
| General election, April 5, 2016 | |||||
| Nonpartisan | Rebecca Bradley (incumbent) | 1,024,892 | 52.35% | ||
| Nonpartisan | JoAnne Kloppenburg | 929,377 | 47.47% | ||
| Scattering | 4,678 | 0.24% | |||
| Total votes | 1,957,947 | 100.0% | |||
| Legal offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Justice of theWisconsin Supreme Court 2015–present | Incumbent |
Statewide political officials ofWisconsin | ||
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