After returning home from World War II, veteran Medgar Evers decided to vote in a Mississippi election. But when he and some other Black ex-servicemen attempted to vote, a white mob stopped them. 

“All we wanted to be was ordinary citizens,” Evers later related. “We fought during the war for America, Mississippi included. Now, after the Germans and Japanese hadn’t killed us, it looked as though the white Mississippians would...”

We know the story: African-American men received the right to vote on February 3, 1890, through the 15th Amendment, and then racist white supremacist state legislatures in the South passed laws to stop Black people from voting. These laws, combined with physical intimidation from crowds of racists at polling locations, were enough to reduce Black voting registration to a single-digit percentage in some states.

While the legacy of Jim Crow doesn't haunt Wisconsin in the exact same way it does the South, Black people in our state have not been spared when it comes to facing barriers to voting. In fact, we are just weeks removed from news that Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell sent a fundraising email to colleagues praising the success of “37,000 less votes than in the 2018 election, with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.”

There’s a terrible irony in us celebrating Black History Month here in Wisconsin now that we know Spindell was raising money by touting his success in stopping Black and Brown people from voting. After Spindell’s comments, we can't hide behind the illusion of respectability politics and pretend that these measures aren’t intrinsically racist and damaging to Wisconsin’s democracy.

There’s a certain honesty in Spindell’s statement because he doesn’t hide voter suppression behind the elegant lies of “voter fraud” and “missing ballots.” Spindell directly tells us the true goal of voter suppression: to have fewer Black and Brown people vote in Milwaukee County.

Voter suppression not new  

Voter suppression in Wisconsin didn’t start with Spindell. The voter suppression of Black and Brown people is baked into the DNA of Wisconsin law.

Black and Brown people were explicitly and specifically denied the right to vote in the Wisconsin Constitution of 1848. White men, even white men who weren’t yet citizens but “declared their intention to become citizens,” were allowed to vote because, back then in Wisconsin, your right to participate in “democracy” hinged on whiteness and maleness. Native men were granted citizenship by Congress, and those who rejected tribal affiliation were the only others extended the franchise.

These racist Wisconsin Constitutional provisions persisted until Ezekiel Gillespie, a Black person prevented from voting in Milwaukee County, filed a lawsuit against the Board of Election Inspectors. The case went all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

In 1866, the court ruled that Black men have the right to vote in Wisconsin. The decision in Gillespie v. Palmer wasn’t based on racial equality and ethics; it centered on how to correctly count white votes in a referendum that occurred 17 years earlier. Though that’s still more than this current Wisconsin Supreme Court has done to protect the disenfranchisement of Black and Brown communities.

And now, over 150 years later, Wisconsinites will be asked to vote for a Supreme Court Justice in February and April who will either work to protect or defeat voter suppression in Wisconsin.

Three types of voter suppression

The mechanics of voting suppression happens in three ways: by making it harder for a person to register to vote, making ballots or their return less accessible, and, most nefariously, deciding whose votes count. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has enabled the Wisconsin Legislature and other officials like Spindell to do all three. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court in Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP v. Walker and League of Women Voters v. Walker upheld the strict Wisconsin Voter ID laws that have dissuaded thousands of Wisconsin voters, again disproportionately from those in Black and Brown communities. Voter ID laws here in Wisconsin are the same type of de facto racist voter suppression laws like the Grandfather-clause and Literacy Test that stopped voter registration in the deep south during Jim Crow.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2022 decreased ballot access for Wisconsinites by banning drop boxes and ballot return assistance for non-disabled voters, further restricting voter access. This is the same theme we saw across the Jim Crow South and reemerging in some states today through the closing of polling locations in Black and Brown communities and restricting voting by mail.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court also upheld one of the most racially biased and unfair redistricting maps in America, allowing Wisconsin Republicans to dominate the State Legislature while receiving fewer total votes than Democrats. Wisconsin election maps disenfranchised so many Black voters that Wisconsin Justice Hagedorn referred to the Voting Rights Act, saying, "there are good reasons to believe that a seventh majority-Black district is needed to satisfy the VRA."

Instead of creating new policies that reflect the will of Wisconsinites, politicians have been allowed to pursue deeply unpopular political agendas with near impunity, shielded by unfair maps and voter suppression. 

Exercise your freedom to vote

Later this month – and then again in a general election this April – Wisconsin voters will have the opportunity to elect a new Supreme Court justice. Whoever wins this seat will hold enormous influence over our rights and shape the outlook of Wisconsin's democracy for years to come. Having a Supreme Court that empowers everyone to vote will be crucial to ending the plague of racist voter suppression and charting a better, more equitable and just course for our state.

Trans youth are once again under attack in state legislatures across the country. This year, dozens of proposed bills would require schools to out trans students against their will, regardless of any harmful consequences at school or at home. These forced outing bills claim to protect parents’ rights, but they do no such thing. Instead, these bills endanger trans students, who have the right not to be outed and to be treated with dignity and respect at school.

People — children and adults — have a constitutional right not to have intimate facts about their lives disclosed without their consent. That includes their sexual orientation, HIV status, or whether they are transgender. Children do not give up their constitutional rights by enrolling in public school. Students also have rights under federal law to keep certain information private, and not to have that information revealed without their consent. But forced outing bills are designed to do exactly that: reveal private information about trans students, regardless of whether the student consents or whether they may suffer negative or harmful consequences at school or at home from that disclosure.

Many parents may hope their children will come to them first with questions about gender and sexuality. But not every child has that option. Youth who are transgender face a real risk of rejection by the adults who are supposed to care for them when they disclose their gender identity. Trans people are much more likely to be abused by their immediate family based on their gender identity, and high risks of abuse and family rejection mean trans youth are overrepresented in foster care homes, juvenile detention centers, and homeless shelters. These high rates of familial rejection and abuse dramatically increase the risks of suicidality, substance abuse, and depression. Not every child can be their true selves at home without risking their physical or emotional well-being.

In addition, many supportive parents may want their children to be able to safely explore their identity without being worried that information will be disclosed against their will, and to have a safe space to ask questions they may be uncomfortable asking at home. For trans youth, especially those who cannot be safe at home, school may be one of the few places to be themselves. Trans youth thrive when they are affirmed in their gender identity, which includes being called by a name and pronouns that reflect who they are. When trans youth are supported at home, they can become the happy, confident children their parents hoped they would be. As trans youth themselves report, living as their true selves transforms their lives for the better. Many schools across the country recognize that a supportive learning environment requires treating trans students with dignity and respect, including (at a minimum) calling them by the name and pronouns they want to use.

Forced outing bills are not about parents’ rights: they are designed to harm trans students. Parents have a fundamental right to raise their children, including making important choices like whether to homeschool or enroll in public school. And the ACLU vigorously defends parents’ rights to raise their children, including the rights of LGBTQ parents, and parents’ rights to seek necessary and life-saving care for their children.

But none of those fundamental parental rights are protected by forced outing bills. Parents do not have a constitutional right to be told whenever their child uses a name or pronoun that is not typically associated with the child’s assigned sex at birth. Lawmakers know that —that’s why some of these forced outing bills explicitly do not require parental notification when a student asks to be called by their middle name, or a shortened version of their first name. Instead, these bills require schools to notify parents if someone at school thinks a student might be trans, based on gender nonconformity or a request to use a different name or pronoun.

Forced outing bills are meant to harm trans students, and in the process, hurt everyone: Some of these bills require parental notification any time a student acts in a way that doesn’t fit the school’s view of how a boy or a girl should act or dress. These kinds of laws don’t strengthen families; they just hurt kids, and especially trans youth.