Newsmakers Host Lisa Pugh sits down with former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly and Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell, two of the four candidates vying for the open Justice seat on the state's highest court. The candidates discuss their judicial approach to contentious policy issu…
Moria Krueger, who in 1977 became Dane County’s first female judge and went on to be a founding member of the National Association of Women Judges, died Thursday at her Madison home from a longstanding cardiopulmonary condition, her husband said. She was 80.
Krueger, a Madison resident of more than 50 years, was a 33-year-old defense attorney working in the juvenile system and had already been thinking about running for the bench against Judge Archie Simonson when Simonson described a rape a year before by three teens at West High School as a “normal male reaction to provocative attire and modern society’s permissive attitude toward sex.”
The remarks sparked a recall petition that drew national attention and that culminated in the Sept. 7, 1977, special election, which Krueger won by a comfortable margin.
Krueger spent nearly 30 years on the bench and was never challenged for the seat in subsequent elections. When she announced her retirement in 2006, she told the Wisconsin State Journal that she had worried about whether the county’s older, male judges would accept her, but found that they were helpful — for the most part.
“Some of my colleagues were very welcoming and offered to do everything they could to make me feel more comfortable and more at ease, and I was very grateful for that,” Krueger told the bar association in 2021. “Others would barely talk to me or just ignored my very existence.”
Her husband, Edward, whom she married in 1970, said “it was a struggle for her to be the first, but those that followed did so because she plowed the field.”
A native of Manitowoc, Krueger graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and then the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1970.
“Originally, the only encouragement she got was from her mother and her aunt to continue her education in law school after Berkeley,” Edward said. “Quite frankly, she came from a community where the idea that women could rise to those positions was an absurdity.”
There was only one other woman judge in the state when Krueger was elected. That was Shirley Abrahamson, who was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 1976, won election four times and retired in 2019. She died the next year.
Krueger in 1979 helped found the National Association of Women Judges, an organization she said she was glad in 2006 was “becoming less and less necessary.” She also helped draft Wisconsin’s first juvenile justice code.
During retirement, her husband said, Krueger was active with the United Nations Association of Dane County and the UW-affiliated PLATO, which stands for participatory learning and teaching organization and is a place for adults, often retired, to take noncredit academic courses. She also volunteered at Meriter Hospital and was an “avid reader,” he said.
“She was a deeply playful person in all aspects of her life,” her son Sebastian said. “She had an insatiable inquisitiveness and loved engaging with, understanding and probing people.”
Krueger said after announcing her retirement that being a judge was “not as much fun as it used to be,” in part because of high caseloads.
“But I think I’ve been very, very lucky to have had this as my career,” she said.
Krueger is also survived by two other adult children, Phoebe and Brandon, and five grandchildren.
A memorial service has not yet been scheduled, but her family said those wishing to honor her life can make donations to the Wisconsin Equal Justice Fund.
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“There were six of us and no primary. It was an exciting race and covered nationally, billed as a battle of the sexes.”
Dane County Circuit Judge Moria Krueger speaks at a press conference on Sept. 18, 1977, after being sworn in as the county's first female judge. About 150 supporters crammed the courtroom for the historic event.