Wisconsin maintains highest % of female state Supreme Court justices in U.S.

The latest election added a left-leaning justice to the bench, but the gender split did not change. Of the court’s seven justices, six are women, the largest proportion in the nation of females on a top state court.

By Annie Pulley, THE BADGER PROJECT

Liberals bumped their majority from 4-3 to 5-2 on the Wisconsin Supreme Court with the election of Chris Taylor in April. Unlike last year, the ideological tilt of the court wasn’t up for grabs, and the race didn’t set spending records. But, like last year, April’s election maintained Wisconsin’s reputation for seating the largest percentage of women justices on a state’s highest court.

Six of the seven justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court are women, still the highest rate of women — 86 percent — of all the state Supreme Courts in the country, an analysis by The Badger Project found.

Across the country, 143 of the approximate 327 sitting justices – about 44% – on the highest courts in each state are women, according to The Badger Project’s review.

In 2023, 41% of all justices on top state courts were female. In 2020, that number was 38%.

The state supreme court with the next-highest proportion of female to male justices is Nevada. Five of its seven justices are women, a rate of 71%. The next highest-proportion states are Idaho, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming and Alaska at 60%.

Wisconsin Supreme Court justices serve 10-year terms and earn an annual salary of about $196,000.

In 2026, no state high court is composed of only men. Though in 2023, South Carolina had five male justices and no female justices. In 2026, South Carolina remains near the bottom with four male justices and one female justice, a proportion of 20%. Mississippi is dead last with one woman on its nine-justice court, a rate of 11%.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s four women justices give it a rate of about 44%.

Though the Wisconsin Supreme Court may be a ground-breaker in gender makeup, it is not racially diverse. All the justices are white. The last non-white judge to sit on the court was Justice Louis Butler, appointed to the state’s highest court by former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, in 2004. Butler lost his reelection campaign in 2008 to Michael Gableman, a white man.

Ideological composition of the court

Including newly-elected and left-leaning Taylor, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s six female justices are generally seen as being divided 5-1 on the ideological spectrum, with the liberals in the majority. The seventh justice, Brian Hagedorn, is a somewhat independent-minded, right-leaning justice and the court’s lone male at the moment.

Many of the cases the court rules on do not divide the justices ideologically, according to an analysis from the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.

In the 2024-2025 term, the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided 23 cases, and the bench split along its 4-3 partisan lines three to five times, the analysis explained. The term, which included left-leaning Justice Susan Crawford, elected last year, represented the lowest percentage of partisan splits in six years.

Women in the judiciary

Sally Kenney, a political science professor at Tulane University, told The Badger Project last year that using gender to explain how judges decide cases is not “very helpful.” But gender can be relevant in evaluating how judges ascend to the bench, Kenney said.

State-level election campaigns for female judicial candidates often must spend more per vote than men, Kenney said. And federally, where judges are appointed, women face double standards in the types of questions they’re asked during confirmation hearings and can be approved at lower rates, she added.

Ultimately, women are significantly represented in the legal profession yet continually underrepresented in the judiciary, Kenney said. 

Nearly 60% of students in accredited law schools are women, according to the American Bar Association. But as of 2024, women make up about 33% of federal judges.

In her 2013 book, “Gender and Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter,” Kenney argued that one reason feminists may seek out evidence that a judge’s gender influences how he or she decides a case is as a way to argue that more women should hold positions in the judiciary. 

It’s less a matter of how women judges will decide cases and more that they are in a position to decide cases and work within a system that doesn’t unfairly exclude them, Kenney explained.

“It’s just a fundamental part of democracy that women participate,” she said. 

Percentage of female justices on the top courts in each state

Rank	State	Proportion of women
#1	Wisconsin	86%
#2	Nevada	71%
#3	Idaho	60%
#3	New Mexico	60%
#3	Rhode Island	60%
#3	Tennessee	60%
#3	Utah	60%
#3	Wyoming	60%
#3	Alaska	60%
#4	Illinois	57%
#4	Michigan	57%
#4	Arkansas	57%
#4	California	57%
#4	Florida	57%
#4	Kentucky	57%
#4	Massachusetts	57%
#4	Minnesota	57%
#4	Missouri	57%
#4	New York	57%
#4	Montana	57%
#5	Washington	56%
#6	Maine	50%
#6	Hawaii	50%
#7	Georgia	44%
#8	Arizona	43%
#8	Colorado	43%
#8	Maryland	43%
#8	New Jersey	43%
#8	North Carolina	43%
#8	Ohio	43%
#8	Oregon	43%
#8	Pennsylvania	43%
#9	Delaware	40%
#9	Vermont	40%
#10	Kansas	33%
#10	Texas	33%
#11	Connecticut	29%
#11	Iowa	29%
#11	Virginia	29%
#11	Louisiana	29%
#12	Oklahoma	22%
#12	Alabama	22%
#13	New Hampshire	20%
#13	South Dakota	20%
#13	West Virginia	20%
#13	Indiana	20%
#13	North Dakota	20%
#13	South Carolina	20%
#14	Nebraska	14%
#15	Mississippi	11%

The Badger Project is an independent, reader-supported news nonprofit in Wisconsin.