New Senate effort: Limit or kneecap State Bar

Former Attorney General Mark Brnovich has been hit with an avalanche of State Bar complaints for hiding the fact that his own investigation into the 2020 election turned up no evidence of fraud.

Meanwhile, more Bar complaints are likely coming against other lawyers as their frivolous election fraud lawsuits are laughed out of court.

So naturally, the Legislature is looking to limit the Bar’s reach or kneecap it entirely.

Senate Bill 1435 would end the requirement that Arizona attorneys join the Bar. Instead, the Arizona Supreme Court would have to pick up the job of policing the legal profession.

According to the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Justine Wadsack, the Bar threatened to “immediately disbar” any lawyer who dared to take on a COVID-19 case.

“I had hundreds, if not over a thousand people, that tried to sue doctors, state officials, county officials, city officials who were basically telling them if they didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine, if they didn’t mask their children in schools, if they didn’t comply, that they would lose their jobs or their children would be kicked out of school,” she told the House Judiciary Committee last week. “The attorneys came to me telling me they were restricted from accepting any of those cases because, if they did, the Arizona State Bar would immediately disbar them.”

Wadsack spoke of an unvaccinated woman who believes her COVIDrelated injuries were the result of medical malpractice.

Rep. Analise Ortiz, D-Tempe, then had the nerve to ask a question.

“Sen. Wadsack, do you have evidence that the Bar told the attorney not to take the case vs. maybe the attorney just made that decision based off their own experience?”

Wadsack interrupted, “Rep. Ortiz, I don’t owe you anything in the way of proof.”

Note to Wadsack: It’s a good idea to bring the goods when you’re asking the Legislature to kill an 88-year-old law that protects the public from crooked and incompetent attorneys.

Then again, maybe it’s not all that important when Republicans are really looking to stop the Bar for an alto

gether different reason — to protect the lawyers who have been using the courts to promote a political agenda.

Since last week’s hearing, Wadsack has said she can’t provide any evidence of the Bar’s threat because she needs to protect the identities of all those involved.

More likely, because it didn’t happen. “That’s just not our role,” State Bar CEO and Executive Director Joel England told me. “We don’t advise attorneys on what cases they can and can’t take. I don’t know how else to say it other than to say no, we don’t do that.”

If, in fact, Wadsack really talked to a thousand people who couldn’t find anyone to take their COVID-19 cases, perhaps it’s because the Legislature in 2021 passed a law granting immunity to health care providers, employers and others for actions taken during the pandemic.

Of course, Wadsack’s bill sticking it to the Bar passed anyway, on a partyline vote.

As did Sen. Anthony Kern’s SB 1092 on Tuesday, preventing the Bar and the Supreme Court from disciplining or revoking an attorney’s license for “bringing a good faith, nonfrivolous claim that is based in law and fact to court.”

Never mind that such a thing is already illegal. Lawyers are only subject to punishment if they bring bad faith, frivolous lawsuits.

Count Rep. Alexander Kolodin in on kneecapping the Bar. The Scottsdale Republican, an attorney who is under investigation by the Bar for filing a frivolous election fraud lawsuit in 2020, said the Bar is biased against conservatives.

“I want to be judged by a jury of my peers, a cross section of society and not necessarily people who have different political biases like a lot of my profession does,” he said, during a discussion of Wadsack’s bill.

I’m guessing a fair number of his fellow attorneys agree — the ones who are now facing the prospect of Bar complaints for using the courts as a political PR machine.