Photo credit: Judge Brian Hagedorn

The Wisconsin Realtors Association (WRA) has rescinded its endorsement of Hagedorn and asked for an $18,000 campaign contribution to be returned. Also, the state’s largest business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, which has poured millions of dollars from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce into elections creating the conservative Republican-backed majority on the current state Supreme Court, has withdrawn its financial backing of his candidacy.

Lobbyists for both state groups also helped draft the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s nationally embarrassing “ethics code,” which is more like a blueprint for judicial corruption. It specifies justices aren’t required to recuse themselves from cases involving parties that have made large financial contributions to their election campaigns. State business lobbyists have never shied away from supporting ethically dubious, pro-business, conservative judicial candidates.

So, why then are businesses suddenly embarrassed to be associated with Judge Hagedorn? It’s directly related to his public opposition to equal rights under the law for same-sex couples, including the right to marry (on June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalized it in all 50 states, and required states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses).

There has been a rapid shift in public opinion toward marriage equality following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges; a 2016 Marquette Law School poll showed 64% in Wisconsin favored marriage equality with only 28% opposed. Ten years earlier, 59% of those who voted in a Republican-sponsored statewide referendum supported adding a ban on same-sex marriage to the Wisconsin Constitution.

Hagedorn a Hateful Throwback

Hagedorn isn’t merely a throwback, but an openly hateful one who, on a legal blog, equated private sexual activity between human beings of the same sex to having sex with dogs and horses. In 2016, Hagedorn founded Augustine Academy in Waukesha County, created as a private Christian school incorporating opposition to same-sex relationships and any sexual behavior outside of marriage as core principles. Teachers may be fired, and students may be expelled, if they engage in what Hagedorn’s school deems “immoral sexual activity”—defined as same-sex relationships or heterosexual relationships outside of marriage. The school’s “immoral sexual activity” ban also extends to the private lives of students’ parents.

The WRA, which does business with people of diverse backgrounds statewide, said it withdrew its endorsement because Hagedorn’s candidacy was being overshadowed by “issues with which we do not want to be associated and that directly conflict with the principles of our organization and the values of our members.” That prompted Hagedorn’s campaign to attack those who oppose him as “anti-religious zealots.” That’s an insult to the majority of deeply committed Christians and followers of other religions who harbor no ill will toward LGBTQ individuals. There’s nothing anti-religious about strongly supporting equal treatment under the law for everyone regardless of sexual orientation. But a Hagedorn campaign spokesman called respecting LGBTQ rights to be part of a liberal political agenda, saying: “We’re confident voters prefer a justice who stands by the rule of law.”

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That’s a bizarre argument to make on behalf of a court candidate who clearly does not stand by the rule of law. Instead, Hagedorn ridicules landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions that struck down laws criminalizing private consensual sexual behavior and denying equal marriage rights. When legal decisions by the nation’s highest court do not conform with Hagedorn’s extreme political or religious views, he mocks them as no better than legalizing humans engaging in sex with sex with dogs and horses.

Changing Times

This is an important moment in our political history if traditional Republican business organizations now refuse to fund judicial candidates who openly display bias against members of the LGBTQ community who appear before them. That was not the case just three years ago, when those same organizations were major contributors to Justice Rebecca Bradley’s successful election to a 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Like Hagedorn, Bradley was originally appointed a judge by then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker and had previously written opinion pieces expressing contempt for members of the LGBTQ community. As a college senior, Bradley wrote Marquette Tribune columns attacking them as “queers” and “degenerates” who deserved no sympathy when they were dying of AIDS because they had brought it upon themselves. Unlike Hagedorn, Bradley apologized publicly and said those heartless views no longer reflected her beliefs.

The election on Tuesday, April 2, between Hagedorn and Neubauer—the latter Wisconsin’s highly qualified Appeals Court Chief Judge—will not change the conservative majority on the court that has existed for 11 years. But the next state Supreme Court election in April 2020 very well could. That’s when Justice Dan Kelly, another Walker appointee, is up for re-election on the same date as the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary. Republican leaders were so concerned about Kelly’s prospects that they tried (unsuccessfully) during the legislature’s lame-duck session to enact legislation that would have cost some $7 million to separate the two statewide elections.

That move proved to be too much even for a majority of Republicans. That’s another positive political sign, along with the growing reluctance of Republican funders to finance openly bigoted candidates.