Empower Wisconsin  | July 11, 2022

The liberals on the Wisconsin Supreme Court have beclowned themselves again.

In a case involving a transgender woman, the leftist judicial activists put woke politics ahead of public safety, common sense, and the law.

In the 4-3 decision, the court ruled the woman, who used to be a boy, had to use her given name in registering as a sex offender. The transgender female, now identified in court records simply as “Ella,” thinks that’s unfair because she gave up her name along with her penis in transitioning to her new gender identity.

When Ella was 15 (and still Jim or whatever her male name was at the time — the court records don’t say), he “held down and forcibly performed oral sex on a teenaged acquaintance with the assistance of a friend (Mandy) who put a hand over the victim’s mouth to prevent him from yelling.”

The victim, named Alan, was 14, autistic, blind in one eye, and 6 inches shorter and more than 200 pounds lighter than his male tormenter at the time, according to court records.

A circuit court judge ruled state law required the 15-year-old to register as a juvenile sex offender. The male later to be named Ella appealed. Ella argued that, while entering the juvenile justice system as a male, “Ella realized she was a transgender girl.” She argued that being forced to register her former male name is “cruel and unusual punishment” and violates her right to free speech.

“Ella has a traditionally masculine legal name she believes is incompatible with her gender identity. Ella complains she is bound to ‘out herself’ as a male anytime she is required to produce her legal name.”

The majority opinion, written by Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley, rejects both arguments.

First, state law prohibits sex offenders from petitioning to change their names, although they can use an alias if they notify the Department of Corrections in advance.

Second, well-established precedent holds Ella’s placement on the sex offender registry is not a “punishment” under the Eighth Amendment, and it is neither cruel or unusual.

Third, “Ella’s right to free speech does not encompass the power to compel the State to facilitate a change of her legal name,” the opinion states.

The woke state was up in arms, crying “trans phobia!” and claiming the ruling is an assault on the LGBTQ+ (and whatever else) community.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, joined by the court’s other two liberals in Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky, declared the majority’s analysis on the First Amendment “takes an overly restrictive view of expressive conduct and denigrates the import of a legal name” and “discounts the burdens Ella faces as a result of the restriction” on changing her name.

The burdens?

What about the burdens of Alan, or the community at large that has a right to know if a sex offender lives among them?

Walsh Bradley criticized the majority’s citing of 18th and 19th century sources to support its arguments, writing that those sources and their authors could not have conceived of the nuances of 21st century conceptions of individual rights. Or sex changes — and the gender-bending words of the Kinks, “Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.”

“It is no wonder the majority finds no protection for Ella in these sources. At the time of the founding Black people could be considered property and women had no rights—transgender rights were the furthest thing from the founders’ minds,” Walsh Bradley wrote.

What an incredibly insipid response. Pulled from the talking points of the Democratic Party. There are plenty of court cases from the 18th and 19th centuries that are just as legally sound and as constitutionally applicable today as they were when they were written.

As woke as they want to be, the liberals on this court can’t substitute liberal politics for the rule of law.

Walsh Bradley, Dallet, Karofsky, they are tools of the radical left.

And they are collectively Empower Wisconsin’s Tool of the Week.