Photo illustration by Getty Images.
The President of the State Bar of Montana Toni Tease joined the Senate Judiciary Committee at their Jan. 7 meeting in response to a request for an apology for partisan attacks against Republicans made by a Montana lawyer.
In December, a group of 19 senators, led by Sen. John Fuller, R-Kalispell, wrote to Tease objecting to disparaging remarks and name-calling by a Montana lawyer during a panel hosted by the State Bar last April, and said the Bar’s sponsorship of the seminar amounted to “implicit endorsement” of the remarks.
Speaking before the committee, Fuller said that an attorney had clued him in to the comments made by a Bozeman-based lawyer, Jim Goetz, during a continuing legal education seminar put on by the State Bar titled “Portraits in Courage-Unpopular Causes and Representing the Unrepresentable.” While Goetz was not originally scheduled to take part in the panel, he was a last-minute addition by the moderator, Supreme Court Justice Laurie McKinnon.
During the discussion Goetz derided a Montana Supreme Court decisions as “a piece of sh–t,” called Gov. Greg Gianforte names, and labeled some laws passed by the Republican-led legislature “pieces of garbage.” He earlier told the Daily Montanan his comments were his own, and he was not representing the State Bar.
Fuller said that he had attended the disciplinary hearings for Attorney General Austin Knudsen over 41 alleged counts of professional misconduct, and felt that “what the Attorney General had been accused of paled in comparison to what attorneys who were at an official function of the Montana Bar Association were subjected to,” which led him to write the original letter.
Tease drafted a letter in response and attended the committee meeting via Zoom.
“I will not be commenting on nor expressing an opinion on any remarks made at that event,” Tease told the committee. “The State Bar does not comment on disciplinary proceedings, and the Dec. 23 letter made it clear that that particular matter (Goetz’s remarks) has been referred to the Office of Disciplinary Council.”
Tease was not president of the State Bar when the continuing education event took place, did not attend and was not involved in the planning of any seminars or panels. In a previous conversation with the Daily Montanan, Tease said that “comments made by panelists do not reflect positions of the State Bar,” adding that Goetz does not hold any leadership position in the State Bar.
The State Bar is a nonpartisan organization, independently funded and independently governed by 16 elected trustees, Tease told the committee, and thereby isn’t considered a government entity.
All practicing Montana lawyers are required to be members of the Montana State Bar, which was created by order of the Montana Supreme Court to maintain standards of integrity and conduct of members and provide continuing legal education to members, among other purposes.
Fuller is sponsoring a bill, SB 92, to make membership to the State Bar voluntary, one of more than two dozen bills brought by Republicans this session aimed at judicial reform.
In her letter to the committee, Tease mentioned that the State Bar did, within days of the continuing education event, apologize to the governor’s office, and wrote that the organization regrets the comments “have overshadowed what was otherwise an outstanding educational program.”
She did not comment further on the remarks made by Goetz, due to the matter being referred to the Office of Disciplinary Council.
Committee chairperson Barry Usher, R-Billings, asked Tease whether, in general, comments, insults and disparaging remarks made by attorneys could violate the State Bar’s Rules of Professional Conduct.
Tease responded that attorneys are not prohibited from criticizing the decisions or opinions rendered by any court.
“I’m not personally aware of any attorneys who are afraid or feel chilled in their speech with regard to those types of criticisms,” she said.
She also quoted U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said “some tension between the branches of government is inevitable, and criticism of judicial interpretations of the people’s laws is as old as the Republic itself.”
“Roberts draws the line with violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to defy lawfully answered judgments. And I would say that the State Bar would agree with that position,” Tease said.
While comments made by State Bar members do not represent positions taken by the organization at large, Tease said that the State Bar does take official positions on legislation, “concerning the regulation of the legal profession and the improvement of the quality of legal services delivered to citizens of our state.”
However, there is a mechanism for individual members to object to those positions, and Tease indicated that only one or two individuals had objected to any official positions during the last session.
Before Tease appeared before the committee, and throughout her testimony, Committee Vice Chair Andrea Olsen, D-Missoula, objected to the committee’s actions.
“In this letter, senators are complaining about what I believe amounts to free speech,” she said. “If we can’t accept that the public, that our constituents, that the citizens of Montana are going to be concerned, unhappy, angry, may in jest or in joke or in a fit of emotion say things that we may or may not like, it’s our obligation to allow and to protect every Montana citizen’s right to free speech.
“In addition, to call in an association to answer for that member’s comments, to call them in to ask for an apology and demand punishment is us, as the Senate, forcing speech upon organizations, and this is beyond the scope of what we as the Senate should be doing in this committee. I believe we have very wide and broad investigative powers, but when we start using this to investigate the citizens based on what they say, we’re crossing a line. And I would like to object to this committee doing that today.”