State Bar of Georgia · ADA Access Diary · Day 11 of 25
I filed grievances against two Bar officials (Deputy General Counsel Morrison and Deputy General Counsel NeSmith) and sent notice emails. Filing required family assistance because a CAPTCHA barrier blocked independent filing. NeSmith (11:05 AM) sent a litigation-threat shutdown letter restricting further substantive correspondence.
What had to be true
For a structural-conflict notice to be necessary, the office screening the new grievances had to be the same office whose own deputies were now respondents. For the CAPTCHA point to be an access issue, the only filing route had to require completing an image challenge my assistive technology could not pass.
What I argued
- The Bar shifted blame instead of fixing the record: "The Office blamed my labeling for its own routing failure."
- "The Bar cannot simultaneously grant Title II accommodations and deny Title II coverage. One of those statements is institutionally false."
- Structural conflict: the office "cannot screen a grievance against its own Deputy General Counsel without a structural conflict."
- Asked the central question: "What is the institutional interest served by leaving a self-admittedly defective dismissal in place against a disabled complainant?"
- Stated I would have preferred not to escalate: "I tried to facilitate this privately but have been refused any single point of contact by the Ga Bar."
What the Bar said
NeSmith (11:05 AM): "You have now expressly threatened litigation against the State Bar of Georgia," and therefore "the State Bar of Georgia will not engage in further substantive correspondence with you… outside formal legal process." He confined further contact to accommodation requests (to Shiptenko) and reconsideration evidence (to Nash).
What it cost
I could not file on my own: the CAPTCHA barrier meant "access depended on another person's schedule, not [my] choice," forcing all filings into a single session whenever a family helper was available. My access efforts were then recharacterized as a litigation threat and used to cut off correspondence.
The documents from this day
- The Bar treated my filings as a litigation threat and shut down communication
- I filed a grievance against Deputy General Counsel Andreea N. Morrison
- I laid out the Bar’s own contradictory words from May 4 to 14
- The Bar acknowledged receipt of a grievance
- I filed a grievance against Deputy General Counsel William D. NeSmith III
Read the full story on the State Bar page. See the record in the document room.