U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear case from disciplined Maryland lawyers

The nation’s highest court will not take up the case of two Maryland lawyers who were disciplined for comments made about judges.

The U.S. Supreme Court this week denied a certiorari petition from the lawyers, Marylin Pierre and Asher Weinberg.

The petition raised questions about the scope of lawyers’ First Amendment rights and asked the justices to adopt a clearer standard for when an attorney’s speech can lead to discipline.

The lawyer for Pierre and Weinberg,  Irwin R. Kramer, criticized the U.S. Supreme Court for choosing to remain silent on this issue.

“Unable to engage in a robust debate over the performance of judges, lawyers who do speak out must fear retaliation by jurists who dissect each word,” Kramer said. “By punishing their most knowledgeable critics, judges have insulated themselves from the same criticism leveled against other public officials.”

The lawyers’ petition asked the court to apply the test outlined in New York Times Company v. Sullivan in attorney discipline cases. The 1964 Sullivan case said that public figures must show that a statement was made with “actual malice,” or knowledge that the statement was false or reckless disregard for whether it was false, in libel cases.

The Maryland Supreme Court reprimanded Pierre in August after concluding that she made a false statement about a group of sitting judges while she was running for a seat on the Montgomery County Circuit Court in 2020.

Pierre’s campaign account tweeted that “there are some sitting judges who are only English speakers send people to jail because they could not speak English and discriminate against people based on skin color, country of origins, religious backgrounds or sexual orientations,” according to the Maryland Supreme Court opinion.

Pierre later acknowledged the tweet was untrue and the statement about “sending people to jail because they could not speak English” was based on her mistaken recollection of a case from years earlier.

The Maryland bar counsel alleged that Pierre made several other false statements and that she misrepresented information when she applied to join the New York State Bar in 1999. The Maryland Supreme Court only reprimanded Pierre for the tweet and for the misrepresentation on her bar application.

In an unusually critical opinion, the justices also cautioned bar counsel to avoid launching investigations so close to elections.

Weinberg received an indefinite suspension in August. Among other violations, the Maryland Supreme Court found that Weinberg made improper comments about a judge in Anne Arundel County.

The judge had struck Weinberg’s appearance in a criminal case, over his objection, because the prosecutor indicated he might need Weinberg to testify at trial after Weinberg met with prosecution witnesses and they changed their minds about their identifications of the defendant in a robbery.

When Weinberg later appeared before the same judge in a different case, he asked her to recuse herself and explained his reasons, saying, “You are a liar, you are biased, you have demonstrated bias, you have stepped into the shoes of the state’s attorney on occasion, you refuse to apply the law when it doesn’t suit your purposes or when you don’t agree with it. You are complicit in kidnapping and basically you are corrupt for a judge. So, I have to ask you that you recuse yourself.”

In a brief order Wednesday, the Maryland Supreme Court stayed Weinberg’s indefinite suspension and ruled that he is subject to a six-month probationary period in which he must comply with state rules for attorney conduct.

The Maryland Attorney Grievance Commission, which was the respondent in the action before the U.S. Supreme Court, waived its right to respond to the certiorari petition. The Maryland Attorney General’s Office represented the commission in court and declined to comment Thursday.