The Supreme Court of Florida ruled that two Black attorneys who publicly criticized a judge’s decision to reverse a $2.75 million jury award for a Kenyan doctor who sued a hospital system for racial discrimination in 2021 should be suspended from practicing law for 30 days.
In their opinion issued on June 26, obtained by Atlanta Black Star, the seven justices on the court unanimously found that Florida civil rights attorney Jerry Girley and his daughter Brooke Girley, who holds an “of counsel” position in his firm, had engaged in professional misconduct and “impugned the qualifications and integrity” of a Florida judge by making public statements suggesting he was racist and that he had overturned the jury’s verdict because the plaintiff was Black.
In 2021, Jerry Girley represented Baiywo Rop in a civil lawsuit against Adventist Health System before the Ninth Judicial Circuit. Rop, a native of Kenya, alleged that Adventist Health wrongfully terminated him from its residency program due to discrimination based on race, national origin, and disability. The complaint also alleged retaliation.
In 2014, during the first year of his radiology residency, Rop had become ill from an auto-immune disease and began to display symptoms such as chronic red eyes, memory loss and numbness, which inhibited his academic performance, his lawsuit said.
After taking two weeks off to address his medical condition, he requested additional medical leave and offered to do a rotation in Kenya while he was absent, which he said his program director initially supported, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
But other faculty members said Rop was lazy and needed to stop smoking marijuana, the lawsuit said, statements Rop found discriminatory, and which prompted him to complain to program managers. While he was negotiating a solution to remain in his residency, he was fired, with Adventist Health citing poor performance.
After Girley presented Rop’s case to the court, Adventist Health moved for a directed verdict dismissing all of his claims. The presiding judge, Judge Kevin Weiss, granted the health system’s motion on Rop’s claims of discrimination based on national origin and disability. However, he put off ruling on Rop’s claims of discrimination based on race and retaliation for a later date.
At the conclusion of the trial, a six-member jury returned a verdict in favor of Rop, finding that he proved that his race was a motivating factor in the decision to terminate him, and awarded him compensatory damages in the amount of $2.75 million. The jury rejected the retaliation claim.
A week after the jury’s verdict, Judge Weiss ruled on Adventist Health’s earlier motion for a directed verdict based on the racial discrimination claim and decided in favor of Adventist, finding that Rop failed to prove his case for unlawful discrimination based on race under the Florida Civil Rights Act.
After the trial court entered its verdict order, Brooke Girley reposted on her social media posts by her brother Brian Girley, who handles social media for the firm:
“Today in Orlando Florida a white Judge stole justice from a black doctor. After being awarded by a jury $2.75 million for discrimination a judge reversed their verdict. We need help getting this out.” She posted a photo of Weiss along with another message saying “a white judge stole justice from a black doctor.”
Brooke Girley also made comments of her own on social media regarding Judge Weiss and the Rop case, such as “[T]his is an injustice. One judge shouldn’t be able to overturn a jury verdict,” and “The judge did this own [sic] his on [sic] too. No one filed any post-trial motions.”
She further stated: “I don’t believe he had the authority to make this ruling and we need to hold him accountable.” In other posts, she commented, “[S]ounds like he needs to be investigated. #RemoveJudgeWeiss,” and “[T]he court system is a sham!”
She also stated in one post that “[t]he [Dred] Scott rule still applies in 2021: ‘A black man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.’ Y’all, we can’t let this stand. #RemoveJudgeWeiss.”
In another post, Brooke Girley posted a message claiming that “[E]ven when we win, it only takes one white judge to reverse our victory. … This is an injustice and cannot stand.”
She also posted about organizing a protest rally to “bring attention to fact [sic] that judges are allowed to overturned [sic] jury verdicts and erode our civil rights.”
Meanwhile, in the days after Weiss entered his new verdict, Jerry Girley participated in a couple of online interviews about the case. He suggested, the Supreme Court opinion said, that judges actively make decisions to reduce or preclude monetary awards for Black litigants in discrimination cases and that Judge Weiss was racially biased and exceeded his authority by unlawfully reversing the $2.75 million verdict awarded to Rop.
Among other things, Girley said in a video on a church-based YouTube channel, BlackLoveUnited, “We have gotten jurors to agree with us that discrimination has occurred but consistently we have had judges cut the money, find ways to ensure that our clients at the end of the day did not get paid. Now that’s what happened last Friday,” and “[t]he $2.75 million that was taken by the stroke of a judge’s pen, that was a theft,” “a theft to the community.”
“In our view, in our humble and respectful view, the judge substituted his judgment for the judgment of six people who sat for six days through all the evidence and came to a clear conclusion of what they thought happened,” Girley continued.
The Florida Bar found that the statements by both attorneys violated their oath of admission to the bar, which requires attorneys “to maintain the respect due to courts of justice and judicial officers” by repeatedly making suggestions that Judge Weiss was racist and exceeded his authority in reversing the verdict awarded to a Black litigant.
The court agreed, also finding Jerry Girley guilty of conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, noting his statements were widely disseminated, eroded confidence in the justice system, and that “Judge Weiss even received death threats and had to secure additional security for his protection.”
In their briefs, the Girleys argued that their statements about the judge’s ruling were protected by their First Amendment right to free speech.
The court opinion countered that restrictions are imposed on lawyers’ speech by state bar rules, which prohibit them from “mak[ing] a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge.”
It noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that attorneys must maintain respect to courts of justice and judicial officers, and that “includes abstaining out of court from all insulting language and offensive conduct toward judges personally for their judicial acts.”
In her brief filed in September seeking a review of the bar’s recommendation to discipline her, Brooke Girley argued that “the Bar is attempting to shoot the messenger.”
A graduate of Duke Law School and Yale Divinity School, and a law professor at Delaware Law School, Girley noted that she is a “long-time civil rights advocate and scholar who regularly speaks out against injustice. What [Girley] did in the summer of 2021 was no different than what she has always done. … The Bar simply does not like the content of the Respondent’s speech because it calls out systemic injustice.”
She denied that she ever explicitly called Weiss a racist, and asserted that she had retweeted critical statements made by her brother, and posted “a quote from the infamous Dred Scott case, and the broad critique of the court as a ‘sham.’”
Brooke Girley further argued that she “has voiced such critiques of systemic racism prior to this case and continues to do so as a professor. So what is the difference here? What the Bar is effectively doing here is saying to the Respondent that she can theoretically comment on racial injustice, but she cannot say words that make the Bar feel uncomfortable.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida filed two amicus briefs in support of the Girleys last year when the bar suspended them.
“The Florida Bar’s actions will have the effect of silencing attorneys who speak out against injustice,” said Jerry Edwards, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida. “The right to criticize the government, including the judiciary, is foundational to our First Amendment protections. There are no special circumstances in this case that justify deviating from this principle.”
The amicus briefs, the ACLU said, “highlight a glaring hypocrisy: while prominent Florida-licensed attorneys like Ron DeSantis, Matt Gaetz, and Marco Rubio have made similar critical statements about the legal system without facing any sanctions, the Girleys are being punished. This selective enforcement starkly exposes a double standard that undermines fairness and equality under the law. This is precisely the type of hypocrisy the Girleys were fighting against, highlighting their point that there seems to be a separate standard for Black and brown people.”
The 30-day suspensions of both attorneys take effect 30 days from the June 26 ruling, allowing them time to close their practices, unless they notify the court they do not need the time. They cannot take on any new legal business during their 30-day suspension. Jerry Girley was also ordered to attend The Florida Bar’s Professionalism Workshop. The Florida Bar was awarded costs of $3,643 from Brooke Girley and $5,357 from Jerry Girley.
Great Job Jill Jordan Sieder & the Team @ Atlanta Black Star Source link for sharing this story.
