Ann Walsh Bradley, a liberal judge who has spent thirty years on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, announced that she’ll retire from the bench this Spring, allowing Democratic Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers to appoint a replacement who will then stand for election in the following year, NBC News reports.
The move jeopardizes the current liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which flipped with the election of Janet Protasiewicz to a vacant seat in 2023. In Wisconsin’s system, the governor gets to fill a mid-term vacancy, but the appointee needs to stand for election typically after one year on the Supreme Court, but that schedule may vary if other justices are slated for their elections during the election cycle. Terms are ten years, and there is no mandatory retirement.
Since 1960, only two Wisconsin justices failed to win reelection, and both happened in the last 20 years. Louis B. Butler, an appointee of Democratic Governor Jim Doyle in 2004, lost reelection in 2008; Daniel Kelly, a 2016 appointment by the previous Ron DeSantis-like savior of the GOP, Scott Walker, failed to win reelection in 2020, losing to Democrat Jill Karofsky.