Wisconsin lawyers are required to complete 30 credits of continued legal education every two years, in accordance with the State Bar. This education aims to help attorneys stay up to date with changes to the law as well as to improve “professional competence,” according to the State Case Registry.
Prior to the swearing in of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz in August, the conservative-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court — without even holding a hearing — denied the State Bar’s petition to allow attorneys to fulfill this requirement by taking courses addressing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) in the legal system.
In conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley’s written concurrence, the justice included quotes from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro as part of an extended 33-page rant railing against DEIA programs and its alleged discrimination against white individuals. The conservative justices believe the State Bar’s efforts to affirm the importance of DEIA within the legal community represent a kind of Trojan horse all but ready to impose “group think” on Wisconsin attorneys and usher in an era of reverse racial discrimination.
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The opinions of our conservative Supreme Court justices could not be more out of touch with reality. According to a report from The Sentencing Project, 1 out of every 36 Black Wisconsinites is in prison — a rate higher than in any other state. White people in Wisconsin are 10.9 times less likely to end up behind bars than Black people, according to the Vera Institute for Justice. Clearly, this state — like other states in the U.S. — has racial prejudice baked deep into its “justice” system, a disparity that did not die with the advent of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
DEIA legal education is critical for practicing lawyers in Wisconsin to be mindful and aware of the acute difficulties that marginalized communities in the state face. Whether it is the disproportionate rates of home loan denials for Black people in Milwaukee, the ongoing use of conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ individuals or the dire opioid epidemic affecting Indigenous people on Wisconsin reservations in record numbers, DEI training is necessary for lawyers to understand the needs of and potential bias against their clients or coworkers in a wide variety of contexts.
While it is the case that Wisconsin attorneys can already take DEIA-related courses as part of their continued legal education, the state bar’s petition asked the Supreme Court to consider the expansion of the DEIA curriculum to allow attorneys to fulfill all 30 of their required credit hours in DEIA courses. This new change would center the importance of DEIA in legal thought across the state — the Supreme Court’s denial sends a message that DEIA holds no real importance to Wisconsin attorneys nor the people they represent.
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Justice Rebecca Bradley’s majority concurrence is somewhat laughable in the context of her troubled history of making controversial comments regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In her days at Marquette Law School, Justice Bradley spoke hatefully about the LGBTQ+ community in The Marquette Tribune, including calling gay people “queers” — a term that has since been reclaimed by some, but at the time was considered a slur — and calling people living with AIDS “degenerates.” Ironically, Justice Bradley seems due for DEIA training herself.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has seven justices — all of whom are white. In fact, the state has only had one Black justice in its entire 175-year history. So it does not come as a surprise that the conservative faction on the court does not value DEIA education.
This ruling, however, is only one part of a larger movement against DEIA education spearheaded by conservatives in the state government. The Republican-majority legislature voted to cut the University of Wisconsin System’s budget by $32 million this past summer with the explicit goal of completely defunding DEI offices on UW campuses.
In an interview with PBS Wisconsin, Speaker Robin Vos described dismantling DEI education as humanity’s “most important issue.” The attitude that eliminating DEI education is the most pressing issue — not catastrophic climate change, growing wealth inequality or the sky-high costs of healthcare in Wisconsin — reflects a critical disconnect from the reality of constituents.
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Rather than manufacture perceived socio-cultural threats to legitimize their conservative hegemony in government, Speaker Vos, Justice Bradley and other conservatives should be working to improve the lives of everyone in the state. But their time in power is waning — newly-elected liberal Justice Protasiewicz has flipped the ideological leaning of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, opening the possibility of huge changes to electoral maps, abortion rights and DEI policy could happen in the near future.
Until then, the people of Wisconsin deserve better. Attorneys with awareness of the lived realities of their diverse clients are crucial to building a more fair and equitable justice system. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has failed and only time will tell if it can correct its own mistake.
Jack Rogers ([email protected]) is a sophomore studying Chinese and economics.
