State Bar of Georgia · ADA Access Diary · Day 22 of 25
I escalated to Human Resources, sending a misconduct/harassment/retaliation ADA complaint against three OGC lawyers (NeSmith, Morrison, Burgess) to the Director of Human Resources and eleven leadership and Board officers, with an immediate-preservation demand.
What had to be true
For an HR escalation to be the next step, the internal OGC and ADA channels had to have failed to correct the record or stop the recharacterization, leaving only the institution's HR and governance layers.
What I argued
- The Bar treated an access request as pretext: "I asked for help. The State Bar treated that request as pretext, in its own words."
- Quoted NeSmith's recharacterization back at the institution: "it does not appear that you require assistance," and the request "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."
- Scope is the after-the-fact treatment, not the original grievance: it is "about how three lawyers inside the Office of the General Counsel… treated me after I pointed out a file-handling failure and requested disability access."
- Constructive-notice line to leadership: "You are not learning of this for the first time. On June 2, I put the Executive Director, the Chief Operating Officer, you… on the same written record."
- Demanded confirmation/preservation/conflict-screen by close of the next business day (June 9).
What the Bar said
No substantive response by the June 9 deadline. Read receipts surfaced from Chief Operating Officer Sarah I. Coole (June 8, 5:40 PM ET) and Immediate Past President Ivy N. Cadle (June 9), confirming executive-level reading.
What it cost
I had to assemble a 14-page formal HR complaint and escalate to a dozen officials to be heard, after the line-level channels had recharacterized my access requests. I disclosed the personal toll: "In April 2026 alone, I had two surgeries and two hospitalizations while dealing with this matter."
Read the full story on the State Bar page. See the record in the document room.