How the tone of the Bar’s responses changed at each step, mapped against when outside oversight was watching.
The escalation
Three phases. Each followed a protected activity. The Bar’s rhetoric and conduct escalated after each one.
| Phase | Protected activity | The Bar’s response |
|---|---|---|
| BEFORE the state ADA office (Mar 13 – Apr 29) | Five written ADA accommodation requests over 32 days. | SILENCE. Zero responses to any of the five requests. No acknowledgment of disability. No ADA coordinator identified. No accommodation offered. No process explained. |
| AFTER state ADA office contact (Apr 30 – May 7) | Complainant put the Georgia State ADA Coordinator’s Office on the written record on April 30, 2026. | PERFORMANCE. May 4: granted two accommodations. “Same access as any other complainant.” “Will not take adverse action.” May 7: “Spoke with State ADA Coordinator.” “Analyzing our ADA notices and processes.” “I am one of the designated ADA Coordinators.” All of this while the ADA Office was visible on the thread. |
| AFTER the office was stripped + DOJ filing (May 12 – May 29) | State ADA Coordinator stripped from emails (7 documented instances). Complainant filed a DOJ complaint after the Bar refused to cure the admitted error. | ESCALATION. May 12: “Not a public entity.” Disability questioned. Motive attributed. CC stripped. May 13: phantom meeting retracted, “meant for a colleague.” May 13: “tomorrow” – tomorrow never came. May 15: “will not engage in further substantive correspondence,” delivered the morning originally scheduled for surgery. May 19: unsigned email; non-accommodation inquiries “will not be processed.” May 26: routed back to the official complained about. May 29: “not subject to Title II.” |
SILENCE > PERFORMANCE > ESCALATION
The Bar’s conduct improved only while the State ADA Coordinator was visible. When oversight was removed, the conduct worsened. When DOJ became involved, the conduct escalated to categorical denial.
The litigation question
The complainant repeatedly stated he did not want litigation. The Bar repeatedly accused him of wanting it, and used the accusation to shut down communications.
What the complainant said
- Stated in writing, multiple times, that he was not seeking a lawsuit but a correction.
- Offered to work within the Bar’s own process and asked for help navigating it.
- Requested accommodations so he could participate. The ADA Coordinator granted them.
- Asked questions designed to resolve the matter internally, not escalate it.
- Told the Bar he had never sued anyone and had never been sued in a long business career.
- Stated the last place he wanted to start was here, over the Bar losing two supplements he sent.
- Followed the civil-rights route the ADA Office identified after the Bar refused to cure.
What the Bar said
- May 12: “Your invocation of the ADA process may be directed less toward obtaining accommodation for a functional limitation and more toward securing a particular substantive outcome… or toward establishing a basis for further legal action against the State Bar.”
- May 15: “The State Bar of Georgia will not engage in further substantive correspondence with you concerning your threatened claims… outside formal legal process.”
- May 15: “You have now expressly threatened litigation.”
- May 29: “The State Bar absolutely will not engage in litigation-oriented questioning, legal debate, or adversarial email correspondence.”
The complainant asked for a correction. The Bar called it a threat. He asked for access. The Bar called it a strategy. He followed the civil-rights route the ADA Office identified. The Bar called it litigation. Every time the Bar had no substantive answer, it reclassified the question as an attack and shut down the channel.
Source: Bar correspondence of record, March 13 – May 29, 2026. Quotes verbatim; personal names redacted. The May 19 entry uses the corrected, as-sent wording.
This is what one disabled complainant was sent and shown. You are not alone. Join the club.
[Español: pendiente]
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