Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - State Supreme Court candidate Brian Hagedorn received more than $3,000 over three years for giving speeches to a legal organization that has supported criminalizing sodomy and sterilizing transgender people.

Hagedorn, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, gave speeches in 2015, 2016 and 2017 to Alliance Defending Freedom, earning more than $1,000 each time, according to his campaign and his filings with ethics regulators. Last year, the group covered at least $50 in travel expenses for him for a speaking engagement, according to Hagedorn's campaign.

Alliance Defending Freedom is a Christian legal organization based in Arizona that handles high-profile cases. It represented a Colorado baker who refused to decorate a wedding cake for a gay couple and unsuccessfully challenged a Wisconsin law that allowed gay couples to form domestic partnerships.

The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Alliance Defending Freedom a hate group in 2016 because it has supported criminalizing sodomy, linked homosexuality to pedophilia and unsuccessfully argued in favor of European laws that required transgender people to get sterilized to obtain identity documents listing the name and gender they wanted.

Hagedorn faces Judge Lisa Neubauer in the April 2 election to replace retiring Justice Shirley Abrahamson.

Like Hagedorn, Neubauer sits on the District 2 Court of Appeals in Waukesha. Hagedorn has won support from conservatives and Neubauer from liberals.

Hagedorn has drawn attention in recent weeks for founding a Christian school in 2016 that allows the firing of teachers for being gay and the expulsion of students if they or their parents are gay.

As a law student in the mid-2000s, Hagedorn wrote blog posts that argued the U.S. Supreme Court striking down an anti-sodomy law could lead to the legalization of bestiality and contended gay pride month at his workplace was "homosexual propaganda" that created "a hostile work environment for Christians."

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Hagedorn has called criticism of the school and blog posts an attack on his religious beliefs.

Campaign defends legal group

His campaign adviser, Stephan Thompson, defended Hagedorn taking income from the Alliance Defending Freedom. He did not release copies of Hagedorn’s speeches to the group but said they focused on career advice for law students and were “unrelated to the ADF’s litigation goals and views.”

"Alliance Defending Freedom is one of the most respected constitutional litigation firms in the country, having argued and won many cases in the United States Supreme Court in recent years," Thompson said in a statement. "Judge Hagedorn takes no position on its legal cases or policy goals."

He dismissed the criticism of the organization from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked hate groups for decades.

“Calling a group that has argued and won many cases in the United States Supreme Court in recent years a hate group is irresponsible and unfounded,” Thompson’s statement said.

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Joanna Beilman-Dulman, research director for the liberal group One Wisconsin Now, said the alliance has long had a “discriminatory agenda.”

"This is yet another instance of him acting on his personal views while a judge and more evidence that he cannot be trusted to treat everyone equally before the law,” she said of Hagedorn in a statement.

In 2004, while Hagedorn was in law school, he interned with the group, which was then known as the Alliance Defense Fund. In a 2005 blog post, he called the organization a "wonderful group" that was formed to "fight the culture wars."

Years later, the group represented those suing over a 2009 Wisconsin law that allowed same-sex couples to form domestic partnerships that gave them some of the rights of married couples. As counsel for GOP Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, Hagedorn wrote a legal brief on Walker's behalf refusing to defend the domestic partnership law.

Others argued in the domestic partnership law's favor and in 2014, the state Supreme Court unanimously upheld it.

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Alliance Defending Freedom did not pay Hagedorn income last year for giving a speech but did cover some of his travel costs. Thompson said Hagedorn didn’t take payment "in anticipation of his candidacy for Supreme Court" and would not take payment from the group if he were elected to the high court.

He did not say how much of Hagedorn's travel costs were covered. (Hagedorn reported to ethics regulators that he received a gift or entertainment worth more than $50 from the group last year, but did not have to disclose the specific amount he received.)

Thompson did not say whether Hagedorn would step aside from cases involving Alliance Defending Freedom that could come before him. But Thompson noted the state's high court in 2008 ruled that then-Justice Louis Butler Jr. did not have to step aside in a case touching on gay rights after appearing at a political fundraiser for a group that supported gay rights.

Neubauer’s campaign manager, Tyler Hendricks, questioned Hagedorn’s stance on when he has to step aside.

"Judge Hagedorn is refusing to recuse himself from cases involving an organization from which he has knowingly, personally profited," Hendricks said in a statement. "Wisconsin voters will have to decide if they can trust him to be fair, impartial and independent."