Janet Protasiewicz’s election gives liberals a majority in court ahead of the upcoming ruling on the state’s ban on abortion.
Wisconsin voters on Tuesday elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court, creating a liberal majority on the bench in a key swing state ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Protasiewicz defeated conservative candidate Daniel Kelly in what New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice called the costliest judicial election in U.S. history. More than $42.3 million had been spent as of Monday, far beating the previous all-time high of $15.2 million, according to a review by the website WisPolitics.com.
The Associated Press called the race in favor of Protasiewicz.
In a major victory for abortion rights advocates, the result shifts the court to liberal control after 15 years with a 4-3 conservative majority. That will likely affect some issues that have polarized Americans in other states, such as voting rights and partisan control over the drawing up of legislative maps.
But it was abortion that dominated the campaign, and the court is expected to decide in the coming months whether to uphold the state’s 1849 abortion ban.
That law took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to abolish a nationwide right to abortion. The state’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul has challenged the validity of the statute in a lawsuit backed by Democratic Governor Tony Evers.
Protasiewicz put abortion at the center of her campaign, saying in an ad that she supports “a woman’s freedom to make her own decision about abortion.” Kelly, meanwhile, gained the endorsement of anti-abortion groups.
The outcome of the election also has major implications for the state’s political future on the battlefield. As in 2020, the court could make crucial voting decisions before and after the 2024 presidential election, when Wisconsin is on the verge of becoming a vital swing state again.
In addition, the court may review the state’s congressional and legislative maps, which Republicans have created to maximize their political advantage.
While the election is technically nonpartisan, neither Protasiewicz nor Kelly have made much effort to hide their ideological leanings. The Democratic and Republican state parties poured resources into their favorite campaigns, and outside organizations spent millions of dollars supporting their preferred candidate, including anti- and pro-abortion rights groups.
Democrats argued that a Kelly win could have jeopardized democracy itself in Wisconsin. They noted that a lawsuit from Republican Donald Trump against his loss in the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden came to court within one vote of success.
Republicans portrayed Protasiewicz as soft on crime and said she would use the court to advance a liberal agenda regardless of the law.