Six Questions Rebecca Bradley Must Answer

MADISON, Wis. — Serious questions have been raised in recent weeks over controversial articles and a loyalty pledge Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley made to the state big business lobby. Questions that, according to One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross, the people of Wisconsin are owed answers from Bradley, who was appointed to judicial positions an unprecedented three times in just three years by Gov. Scott Walker, at a televised Supreme Court candidate debate tonight in Milwaukee.

“Rebecca Bradley wrote hateful, despicable things and has yet to offer a sincere apology or explain why she left her job early to pledge that she was the ‘public servant’ of the state big business lobby,” commented Ross. “Tonight she has not only an opportunity but an obligation to answer the questions to which the people of Wisconsin are owed answers.”

Specifically Ross called on Bradley to provide real answers, not spin or campaign talking points, to the following questions:

1. Rebecca Bradley has been appointed by Gov. Walker to three separate courts in three years — not because of her experience but because she was a major contributor to his campaign and shares his radical, polarizing agenda. Even though she owes her career to Walker, she refuses to excuse herself from deciding a case that could come before her court about illegal coordination between Walker’s campaign and outside special interest groups, including one that spent $167,000 on her own 2013 campaign. How can she possibly be neutral or fair in these cases?
2. Rebecca Bradley compared supporters of abortion rights to Nazi sympathizers during the Holocaust and said women who opt to have abortions have been “brainwashed.” She has referred women to a radical anti-abortion group that opposes abortion even to save the life of the pregnant woman. With these extreme views, how can we trust she will protect women’s rights?
3. Rebecca Bradley wrote a newspaper column in favor of allowing pharmacists the right to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions from doctors. In that column, Bradley actually directly compared use of birth control to murder. She has refused to clarify if these are still her views. Does she believe birth control is murder and state law should let pharmacists refuse to fill women’s birth control prescriptions?
4. Rebecca Bradley is on record in newspaper writings calling gays “degenerates” and “queers” who engage in “abnormal and immoral” behavior. The bottom line is we need a Supreme Court justice who is fair and impartial on important legal decisions — rather than someone who brings her heavily biased, extreme views on so many political and human issues. How can we believe her when she says she has changed her opinions when she still has outspoken homophobes raising cash for her campaign?
5. Rebecca Bradley is backed by special interests who are pushing an agenda on the court that favors big corporations – like banks, insurance companies, and corporate polluters – over the best interests of regular people. And this year she even left in the middle of a Supreme Court case hearing to go give a speech to a big business lobbying group expected to spend money for her campaign. During that speech she said, “I am your public servant.” How can we trust Rebecca Bradley’s priorities when she leaves her job early to pander to a group she hopes will support her campaign?
6. Rebecca Bradley wrote in the Marquette Journal that controversial author Camille Paglia, “legitimately suggested that women play a role in date rape.” She has subsequently refused to repudiate her statements and even disputed that she wrote it. How can we trust her to protect crime victims when she is willing to blame the victims of rape for the violence perpetrated against them?

Ross concluded, “A judge on the state high court must be fair, impartial and treat everyone equally before the law. If Rebecca Bradley continues to refuse to even answer legitimate questions about her own words and actions, she can’t be trusted on the state high court and she ought to resign immediately.”