Rebecca Bradley Rules in Favor of Campaign Donor

Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley cast the deciding 4-3 vote last week in a case brought by a major campaign contributor who opposed the governor’s authority to issue successive public health orders during the covid-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit was brought by Jeré Fabick, of Oconomowoc, owner of FABCO Equipment, who contributed the maximum $20,000 to Bradley’s campaign on March 15, 2016 when she was running for a 10-year term on the court. Rebecca Bradley is part of the high court’s 4-3 conservative majority.

In 2010, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted a lax recusal rule that was drafted by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association. That rule does not require justices to recuse themselves in cases where the parties contributed to their election campaigns. WMC and the Wisconsin Realtors Association have spent millions of dollars to elect conservative justices to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Fabick, a longtime GOP donor, contributed about $355,900 to mostly GOP legislative and statewide candidates between January 1994 and June 2020. He is also on the board of directors of the Heartland Institute, a rightwing Illinois think tank.

The lawsuit accused Gov. Tony Evers of acting unlawfully when he issued successive emergency orders in July and September 2020 and February 2021 aimed at controlling the pandemic because the law grants him only one opportunity to do that. He issued his first 60-day emergency order in March 2020, which expired last May.

Last May, the high court’s conservative majority ruled 4-3 in favor of a lawsuit brought by the GOP-controlled Legislature to strike down an attempt by state health officials to extend his first order after it expired.