The Indiana Supreme Court has dismissed a disciplinary complaint against Attorney General Todd Rokita, after Rokita clarified he “really meant” his statement accepting responsibility for a prior reprimand.
The court’s disciplinary commission had previously accused Rokita of denying responsibility for a 2023 Indiana Supreme Court reprimand when he issued a press release just hours after the ruling that seemed to contradict statements he made in a sworn affidavit.
That initial 2023 ruling determined Rokita “engaged in attorney misconduct” when he described Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indiana obstetrician-gynecologist, as an “abortion activist acting as a doctor — with a history of failing to report” on Fox News in 2022.
The Supreme Court wrote in their opinion that Rokita violated rules that forbid a lawyer from making public statements about an investigation where there’s a likelihood of “materially prejudicing” the proceeding. They also wrote that a lawyer cannot “use means that have no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay or burden a third person.” Rokita admitted to both violations, according to the opinion back in 2023.
The Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission filed a new complaint against Rokita less than a month later when he wrote in a press release that he could have defended his actions but simply didn’t want to waste taxpayer dollars.
“In order to resolve this, I was required to sign an affadavit without any modifications,” he wrote in the press release.
In the Supreme Court’s order on Oct. 9, the justices wrote that the dispute seemed “to boil down primarily to whether Respondent really meant it when he told us he was accepting responsibility for violating the Rules of Professional Conduct.” The court then encouraged Rokita and the disciplinary commission to work together to see if they could “get back on the same page.”
The result of that was a joint statement where Rokita reaffirmed what he wrote in the original affidavit to clarify confusion from public statements made after the 2023 ruling. The Supreme Court granted the joint petition to dismiss the case as moot.
The spokesperson for the attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by publication.
Contact Marissa Meador at mmeador@gannett.com or find her on X at @marissa_meador.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana Supreme Court dismisses case against Attorney General Todd Rokita
