Pressure from Left causes law firm to abdicate responsibility

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Examiner:

Legal insiders knew there would be controversy when Paul Clement, the former solicitor general, signed on to defend the Defense of Marriage Act against constitutional challenge. But few could have predicted a controversy so intense that Clement's law firm, under fire from gay activists, would abruptly abandon the defense, forcing Clement to resign in protest. And yet that is what happened on Monday.

The Defense of Marriage Act, often known by the acronym DOMA, does not outlaw gay marriage, but it allows states not to recognize gay marriages from other states, and it defines marriage for the purposes of federal law as "a legal union between one man and one woman."

The Act was passed in 1996 by overwhelming bipartisan majorities -- 342 to 67 in the House and 85 to 14 in the Senate -- and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Gay activists have long opposed it, and many hoped that President Obama and congressional Democrats would repeal it. That didn't happen.

But in February, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the president has now decided DOMA is unconstitutional. Therefore, even though it is the Justice Department's responsibility to defend the laws that Congress passes, and even though the Obama Justice Department defended DOMA in 2009 and 2010, Holder declared the Department would no longer defend the Act against various court challenges that have been brought by activist groups.

That's where Paul Clement came in. When House Speaker John Boehner decided the House would defend DOMA in court, the House retained the giant firm King & Spalding, with Clement handling the case. Firm management considered the likelihood that the representation would be controversial -- that was pretty much guaranteed -- but still signed off on Clement's participation.

That's when the pressure started. King & Spalding prides itself on its diversity programs; in recent years, it has been a national sponsor of the gay-rights Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and boasts that it "actively recruits LGBT law students." When word got out that King & Spalding was defending DOMA, there was talk of gay groups cutting all ties with the firm. Of discouraging top students from joining the firm. Of protests.

Clement's representation caused tension inside King & Spalding, and on Monday that tension spilled into public view. The firm publicly withdrew from the DOMA case and Clement immediately resigned.

King & Spalding chairman Robert Hays said the vetting of the case was "inadequate," but did not explain exactly why King & Spalding took the highly unusual step of abandoning a client. Clement was more specific in his resignation letter, saying he quit not because he holds strong views about DOMA but because he believes that "a representation should not be abandoned because the client's legal position is extremely unpopular in certain quarters." Clement said he will continue defending DOMA at another firm, Bancroft PLLC.

Gay groups quickly gave King & Spalding the seal of approval. "Today we learned once again that it is a bad idea to defend anti-gay bias and discrimination in court, and fewer and fewer people are willing to do it," said Jon Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal.

"This could have gotten very ugly for [King & Spalding]," gay activist and former Clinton administration official Richard Socarides told the Washington Post. "This kind of thing could have stuck to them for decades...A firm like this competes at all the top law schools to recruit all the top students. I'm sure they took a look at this and said, 'What do we need this for?'"

Lefty blogger Markos Moulitsas was even more blunt. "Bigot lawyer resigns and will continue representing bigot Boehner," Moulitsas said in a tweet Monday.

Amid all the threatening and the name calling, one thing was clear. In the furtherance of its political position, the Obama administration has abdicated the Justice Department's traditional responsibility to defend laws passed by Congress, and now King & Spalding has abdicated the lawyer's responsibility to represent a client. And they did it over a law that passed with huge bipartisan majorities in a Republican House and Senate, was signed by a Democratic president, and was defended by two Democratic administrations and one Republican one.

In the end, the guy standing on principle had to find someplace else to work. "Defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do," Clement wrote in his resignation letter. "The adversary system of justice depends on it, especially in cases where passions run high. Efforts to delegitimize any representation for one side of a legal controversy are a profound threat to the rule of law."
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So much for liberal diversity...

[Valin]

But in February, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the president has now decided DOMA is unconstitutional.

 

I wasn't aware that this was part of the Presidents & AG's job description. Here all along (silly me) I thought this was the USSC's job.