One judge chosen for a panel prejudged the congressional maps, writing, “Those maps diluted the votes of many Wisconsinites and enabled some legislators to hold power in excess of the popular will for nearly a decade.”
The state Supreme Court has chosen a biased panel of Democratic donors, a former Democrat Party chair, and Tony Evers appointees to hear the two cases seeking, yet again, to redraw the state’s congressional maps.
The legacy media stories make it sound like the justices chose a series of fair judges using a Republican-created process. This obscures the documented bias of the panelists. The Court’s 5-2 decision came down Tuesday: The liberal justices (plus Brian Hagedorn) created the two panels of three judges each to hear separate cases, filed by liberal law firms, seeking to redraw the Wisconsin congressional maps, perhaps before the 2026 election.
A Wisconsin Right Now review of their appointments shows that the panel is not neutral, but the news media is not telling you that fact:
- ALL of the judges named have significant liberal Democrat ties. The justices did not choose a SINGLE politically neutral or conservative judge for their supposedly neutral panel. They didn’t even make a nominal effort toward neutrality.
- The panelists are Democrat campaign donors.
- One clerked for extremely liberal Justice Shirley Abrahamson.
- One ran the Democrat Party of Marathon County.
- Three were appointed to the bench by Democrat Gov. Tony Evers.
- One judge named to the panel explicitly prejudged the Congressional maps case in his application to Democrat Gov. Tony Evers to be appointed a judge.
- The panel is also not ethnically or geographically diverse; and 50 percent of the judges appointed are from either Dane or Milwaukee Counties.
- The judges endorsed liberal candidates for Supreme Court and, in some cases, donated money to the justices that appointed them.
- It’s not clear which process the justices used to choose the judges. It was completely non-transparent.
The agenda is clear: Redrawing the maps to oust duly elected Republican congressmen like Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil in an effort to overturn the U.S. House and thwart President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The conservative justices railed against the process used to name the judges. The Dane County judges originally heard the cases. “Hand picking circuit court judges to perform political maneuvering is unimaginable. Yet, my colleagues persist and appear to do this, all in furtherance of delivering partisan, political advantage to the Democratic Party,” said Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler.
“Compounding the constitutional violations is the opaque process by which my colleagues selected the three-judge panel,” Ziegler wrote. “There has been no disclosure of criteria, no explanation of procedure, and no transparency whatsoever. Not that these judges bear any fault in their selection, but there are over 260 circuit judges in our state, and we have no information on how or why these six judges were picked.”
Hagedorn, who agreed to create the panels, disagreed with how they were picked, writing, “Given the nature of this case and the statute’s implicit call for geographic diversity and neutrality, a randomly-selected panel and venue would be a better way.”
Here are the panelists:
1. Judge Julie Genovese, Dane County: Shirley Abrahamson’s Former Clerk & Democrat Campaign Donor Who Endorsed Liberal Justices
- Dane County judge (elected in 2009; re-elected in 2015, 2021);
- Liberal campaign donor, including to Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet and other liberals like Kathleen Falk, Peg Lautenschlager and Chuck Chvala.
- Endorsed liberal Jill Karofsky for Supreme Court and liberal Susan Crawford for state Supreme Court.
- Started her legal career as a law clerk to former extremely liberal Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.
- Dismissed a felony fleeing an officer case against a man who subsequently was accused of homicide.
- Special investigator with the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation
- Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Attorney at Foley and Lardner
2. Judge Emily Lonergan, Outagamie County: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ appointee, Former Criminal Defense Attorney & Democrat campaign donor
- Appointed in 2019 by Governor Evers; elected in 2020.
- Liberal campaign donor to many Democrats, including Evers, the state Senate Democratic Committee, the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee, Democrat Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and more.
- Attorney at private law firms
- Endorsed the following liberal candidates
Lisa Neubauer, State Supreme Court
Rebecca Dallet, State Supreme Court
JoAnne Kloppenburg, State Supreme Court
Paul Rifelj, Milwaukee County Circuit Court
Jean Kies, Milwaukee County Circuit Court
Ed Fallone, State Supreme Court - Was a member of the Wisconsin Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers
- Specialized in criminal defense work
3. Judge Mark Sanders, Milwaukee County: Democrat Campaign Donor & Endorser of Liberals
- Democrat campaign donor to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett
- Endorsed liberal Supreme Court candidate Chris Taylor and liberal Susan Crawford
- Elected in 2012; re-elected in 2018, 2024
- Former Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney
4. Judge David Conway, Dane County: Democrat Gov. Tony Evers’ appointee and liberal campaign donor, who Pre-Judged the Congressional Map Case in Writing
- Appointed in 2020 by Governor Evers; elected in 2021
- He donated to liberal justices and candidates
- U.S. attorney’s office prosecutor
- Associate attorney
- Filed a brief supporting an Alabama death row inmate
- PREJUDGED THE CASE: Wrote to Evers when applying to be a judge: “Rucho v. Common Cause, 139 S. Ct. 2484 (2019), has perhaps had the most significant impact on the people of Wisconsin. There, the United States Supreme Court held that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of federal courts, effectively ending a similar Wisconsin lawsuit challenging electoral maps drawn by the state legislature in 2011. Like the maps at issue in Rucho, Wisconsin’s maps were drawn to favor one political party with extreme technological precision. Those maps diluted the votes of many Wisconsinites and enabled some legislators to hold power in excess of the popular will for nearly a decade. By creating such maps, the state impinged the fundamental rights of Wisconsin voters to engage in a fair electoral process for choosing representatives. This, in turn, has increased political polarization in Wisconsin, as politicians must focus more on appeasing party voters to avoid primaries than on appealing to all voters to win general elections.”
5. Judge Patricia Baker, Portage County: Appointed by Democrat Gov. Tony Evers, Endorsed Democrats
- Appointed in 2021 by Governor Evers; elected in 2022.
- Former asst. city attorney and asst. district attorney
- Private law firm
Endorsed Democratic candidates including:
Susan Happ, Wisconsin attorney general, 2014
Joanne Kloppenburg, Wisconsin Supreme Court, 2011
Rebecca Dallet, Wisconsin Supreme Court, 2018
Jill Karofsky, Wisconsin Supreme Court, 2020
Katrina Shankland, Wisconsin Assembly, various (Democrat)
Julie Lassa, Wisconsin State Senate, various (Democrat)
Paul Piotrowski, Wisconsin State Senate, currently (Democrat) - Hard to trace donations without employer listed, but there are donations to Democrats by a Patricia Baker of Stevens Point (Judge Baker served as a member of the Stevens Point School Board).
6. Judge Michael Moran, Marathon County: Former Democrat Party County Chair & Public Defender
- Elected 2011; re-elected in 2017, 2023.
- “Moran has worked as a public defender in Marathon County since 1991. He served as chairman of the Marathon County Democratic Party, but retired from that position when he decided to run for judicial office. He served as the Democratic Party’s chairman since 2006,” according to Ballotpedia.
- Democrat campaign donor.
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