Attorney Chris Crowley, a decorated Gulf War veteran who served in Iraq and Kuwait and was a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve for twenty years, was a 2018 candidate for Florida’s 20th Judicial State Attorney position, which is the head prosecutor over several counties. Crowley ran against the Chief Assistant State Attorney in the Republican primary. During the electoral campaign, Crowley denounced his opponent as “corrupt” and “swampy,” raised concerns about her track record as a prosecutor, her familial connections to a suspected anti-Israel, anti-Semitic group, and what role she may have played in having Crowley investigated and arrested over a small campaign donation from a raffle. Although there is no indication that Crowley recklessly disregarded a high awareness of any probable falsity of those statements, the Florida State Bar, which regulates attorney conduct, brought a disciplinary action against him because the Bar’s rules prohibit attorneys from making a statement with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge, public legal officer, or candidate for election to judicial or legal office. The judge hearing the case, who later recused herself, found Crowley in violation of the ethics rules and recommended to the Florida Supreme Court that Crowley be found guilty, claiming that he did not have an objectively reasonable basis for making his claims.
In joining the case, and based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Counterman v. Colorado, The Rutherford Institute has filed a Motion to Reconsider, arguing that the previous judge’s analysis violated First Amendment protections of free speech—which are heightened in an election context—by applying an unconstitutional standard which would enable claims through the State Bar to be weaponized to chill speech critical of public officials. In Counterman, the U.S. Supreme Court reined in the government’s power to punish speech it deems distasteful or annoying.
Affiliate attorney Phares Heindl is co-counsel of record in the case. The Motion to Reconsider in The Florida Bar v. Christopher W. Crowley is available at www.rutherford.org.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated, and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
Source: https://tinyurl.com/mrvw9jx6
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