Evers' judicial appointments demonstrate dedication to diversity

By Alexandria Staubach and Margo Kirchner
 
Gov. Tony Evers has appointed significantly more women and people of color as judges than his predecessor did, shifting the makeup of Wisconsin’s judiciary.
 
Of Evers’ 66 judicial appointments through 2024, 25 (38%) are persons of color and 36 (55%) are women. Among the appointments are Black, Indigenous, Latin, and Asian individuals.
 
Evers’ appointments seem to show a concerted effort to provide litigants with state judges who are more representative of the state’s overall demographics than was previously the case.
 
To achieve a more diverse bench, Evers in 2019 created a diverse Judicial Selection Advisory Committee, responsible for interviewing and recommending candidates for him to consider when he fills vacancies. Evers placed individuals from different backgrounds on the selection committee.

Committee member Craig Mastantuono recently told WJI that Evers joined the committee at its first meeting and told them that judicial appointments were not to be rewards for donors or the politically connected. “I really think that says something about this governor,” he said.

“It was very important to the governor to achieve a higher level of competency and diversity in the courts," Mastantuono said. 
 
The committee comprises 15 attorneys from different heritages, practice areas, and locations around the state. Mastantuono is first-generation Mexican on his mother’s side, a former officer of the Wisconsin Hispanic Lawyers’ Association, and a criminal defense attorney in Milwaukee. He has been on the committee during both of Evers’ terms.
 
Other former and current committee members have come from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. As for practice areas, current members include a retired circuit court judge, a deputy corporation counsel, a district attorney, a retired public defender, a University of Wisconsin Law School professor, an in-house corporate attorney, and law firm attorneys. They hail from New Richmond, Wausau, Neenah, Appleton, and Trempealeau and Portage counties, as well as the Milwaukee and Madison areas.
 
Evers was “smart to access (a variety) of communities and put them at the table to recruit and recommend applicants,” Mastantuono said.
 
Mastantuono noted that when the committee considers applicants, diversity involves not only gender, race, and ethnicity, but also practice area. Appointees are not predominantly prosecutors and large firm attorneys; they include public defenders and legal aid providers, among others.
 
Attorneys gain “insight from sitting next to someone who struggles to pay the rent,” he said, and they can take that empathy with them to the bench as judges.
 
“It’s a complete myth that there’s a trade-off between competence and diversity,” he said. “We’ve raised the competency and quality of the bench while achieving diversity.”
 
Prior to the Evers Administration, Wisconsin had one of the least diverse or representative benches in the nation. A report by the American Constitution Society in 2016 ​gave Wisconsin an “F” grade, ​ranking the state 44th in the nation for judicial diversity. Among the report’s findings on Wisconsin’s judiciary, it found that white men were 41% of the state’s population but held 76% of judicial seats, while women of color were 9% of the population but held only 1% of judicial seats.
 
The Walker Administration demonstrated a strong preference for conservative white men. A document provided by Evers’ office in response to WJI’s request for records created by the Walker Administration shows that of the 93 judges Walker appointed from 2011 to early 2019 only one was a person of color (Black) and just 23 were women.

​Among the 69 white men Walker appointed were Brian Hagedorn to the Court of the Appeals in 2015, Daniel Kelly to the Supreme Court in 2016, and Brad Schimel to Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2018 (following his loss as the Republican candidate for attorney general that year).
 
Walker also appointed James Troupis to Dane County Circuit Court in 2015 and Vincent Biskupic to Outagamie County Circuit Court in 2014. Prior to his judicial appointment, Troupis had worked on the 2011 Republican redistricting maps and Act 10 public union bargaining legislation. In recent years, Troupis represented Donald Trump before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an attempt to have the 2020 presidential election result overturned and was involved in the false Trump elector scheme. A decade prior to his judicial appointment, Biskupic was a district attorney embroiled in controversy over alleged deals for defendants who made donations to crime prevention and victim advocacy groups. Biskupic's brother was an attorney for the Walker campaign. 
 
Judges appointed by a Wisconsin governor run for election in the next available April election cycle.
 
Nationally, the debate about diversity initiatives rages on. But President Joe Biden’s diversification of the federal bench—more than 60% of his appointees were women, with 37% being women of color—should be a lasting legacy.