Providing a modicum of accountability for the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, an attempt that culminated in the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol, the California Supreme Court today ordered the disbarment of John Eastman, one of President Trump’s lawyers who led the effort.
Without an opinion or any recorded dissent, the court denied Eastman’s petition for review of the State Bar Court’s disbarment recommendation. (Eastman on Discipline.) The Bar Court’s three-judge Review Department last June wrote in an extended opinion, “In a democracy nothing can be more fundamental than the orderly transfer of power that occurs after a fair and unimpeded electoral process as established by law,” and it concluded disbarment is “the appropriate discipline . . . when an attorney, who has sworn to uphold the laws and constitutions of the State of California and the United States, attempts to actively undermine the results of an election to the most powerful office in the United States with the goal of delaying or invalidating the lawful installation of his client’s electoral opponent and thereby keep his client in office.”
A denial of review in most cases does not reflect the Supreme Court’s views on the substance of the ruling below. (See here.) In a bar disciplinary matter like Eastman’s, however, a denial “is a final judicial determination on the merits” and is followed by the filing of the State Bar Court’s recommendation “as an order of the Supreme Court.” (Rule 9.16(b).)
The Supreme Court’s order directs that Eastman’s “name is stricken from the roll of attorneys” and requires him to pay the State Bar $5,000 in statutory sanctions as well as the Bar’s costs.
The court also denied the State Bar’s petition for review, which, although agreeing with the disbarment recommendation, took issue with the State Bar Court’s conclusions that Eastman’s First Amendment arguments required a strict scrutiny standard of review and that significant harm was not an aggravating factor. (See here.)
