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- State Rep. Sheila Stubbs advocates for a task force to investigate the high rates of violence against Black women in Wisconsin.
- The proposed bill aims to allocate funds for a full-time position to support the task force's efforts and gather critical data.
- Victims' families, like Sheena Scarbrough, emphasize the need for state resources to navigate the criminal justice system effectively.
July 28, 2025
Wisconsin State Rep. Sheila Stubbs is once again introducing a bill to establish a task force to address the state’s disproportionately high number of missing and murdered Black women.
Wisconsin State Rep. Sheila Stubbs (D-Madison) is pushing forward with a bill to establish a task force focused on missing and murdered Black women and girls.
On July 25, Stubbs stood alongside lawmakers and victims’ families in Madison to advocate for the bill, her third attempt to get it passed, WISN reports. She hopes the task force will gather data and uncover why Black women face higher rates of homicide in Wisconsin.
She introduced the bill in 2022 and then in 2024, where it cleared the Assembly but never got a Senate hearing. And now she’s urging lawmakers to back the measure she co-authored with Milwaukee state Sen. LaTonya Johnson.
“Can you tell these families why their loved ones were not important enough to at least get a hearing?” Stubbs asked. “It is not fair to these victims and these families that they have to continue to wait.”
The bill would establish a 17-member task force, made up of law enforcement, legal experts, nonprofits, and victims, to examine why Black women and girls face disproportionately high rates of violence in Wisconsin. If approved, the bill would allocate about $80,000 in 2026 and roughly $100,000 in 2027 to fund a full-time position in Attorney General Josh Kaul’s office.
Stubbs proposed the bill after a 2020 Columbia University study revealed that Black women in Wisconsin were 20 times more likely to be murdered than their white counterparts. Sheena Scarbrough joined with Stubbs and other lawmakers a year after her 19-year-old daughter, Sade Robinson, was murdered and dismembered by Maxwell Anderson, a white man she had met for a first date.
Last month, Anderson was convicted on all charges in connection with Robinson’s murder, including first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation and concealment of a corpse, and arson. Speaking before lawmakers, Scarbrough said she wished she had access to state resources to help her navigate the criminal justice system and fight for justice for her daughter.
“You know, there weren’t many other supporters during this time. I didn’t really have anyone to guide me through how to even understand what I’m going through,” Scarbrough said.
The bill is currently awaiting committee hearings in both chambers.
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