The Wisconsin election results are in: Judge Susan Crawford, a liberal justice, has been elected to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, defeating Elon Musk-backed candidate Brad Schimel.
The Supreme Court battle became one of the most expensive judicial elections in American history and one of the first major electoral tests of Donald Trump’s presidency, The Independent reports. The election cost a hundred million dollars, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a campaign-finance watchdog.
Elon Musk alone spent more than $20 million to support Schimel’s campaign. Supreme Court candidates are expected to avoid blatant political bias, however, according to the New Yorker, last Halloween, Schimel dressed up as Trump, he also recently posed below a giant Trump inflatable at a MAGA rally in Waukesha County.
Unfortunately for Brad Schimel, the Musk-funded attack ads on Susan Crawford seem to have backfired.
Crawford noted how Musk ended up energising her voter base. “(His involvement) really lit a fire under people,” she told the New Yorker. “People do not like to see Elon Musk walking into a state judicial race and basically trying to buy a seat on a state Supreme Court.”
Crawford’s victory preserves a 4-3 liberal majority on the state’s highest court, which could have a significant impact on litigation involving abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights, among other key issues.
But what has Judge Susan Crawford previously said about LGBTQ+ rights; is she an ally? Let’s find out.
Susan Crawford’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights
Crawford hasn’t been particularly outspoken about LGBTQ+ issues so far, but she took a very measured and balanced tone when she was asked about trans rights by PBS Wisconsin recently.
GLAAD reports that the public broadcaster asked both Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel: “Do trans people have any specific protections under the law? Are they a protected class? Do they get any other category of protection when it comes to them being singled out as a group?”
Crawford responded: “That is a question where if a case came in front of me, that was making an argument about the rights of trans people or making a claim that they’d been discriminated against or something like that, I would have to look at the law and see what protections were available, and hear out what the attorney’s arguments were both for and against those kinds of protections. Obviously, look at the facts to see what was happening in that case. And then make a decision based on what I thought the facts and the law required.”
She has also made it clear that she is committed “to protecting the fundamental rights and freedoms of all Wisconsinites,” including the LGBTQ+ community.
Her even-handed approach is a stark contrast to Brad Schimel’s extreme anti-LGBTQ+ stance. In 2014, while campaigning for attorney general, he “pledged to defend Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage and initially said he would refuse to uphold a 2009 state law granting domestic partnership benefits to same-sex couples.”
GLAAD also notes that he previously compared same-sex couples to Nazi skinheads when discussing the Masterpiece Cakeshop case: a bakery who fought in the US Supreme Court to discriminate against a gay couple shopping for a wedding cake: “What if a person who is a minority owns a store and a couple of Nazi skinheads come in and demand that [the owner] provides a service?” Schimel said. “Can that person say no? I don’t know that they can if the Supreme Court decides that [the bakery owner] can be forced to make this cake.”
Fair Wisconsin, the state’s LGBTQ+ civil rights and political advocacy organization, issued a statement before the election: “Brad Schimel would be a dangerous addition to the Wisconsin Supreme Court because he poses a threat to our rights, both for the rights of Wisconsinites in general and for the LGBTQ+ community in particular.”
Justice-elect Susan Crawford is scheduled to take office on 1 August 2025.
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