I Told Georgia Bar HR Director Sandra Dixon My Deadline Passed With None of My Nine Questions Answered

From: the complainant
Subject: Day 102. The September 18 Deadline Has Passed. Nine Questions, No Answer.
Attachments: 3 files: a PDF of William D. NeSmith III‘s May 12, 2026 email, a PDF of a motion filed in federal court on May 12, 2026, and the September 5 automatic reply.

Ms. Dixon,

The deadline in my September 5 letter was today at 5:00 PM Eastern. It passed.

I asked nine numbered questions. None of them was answered.

The only reply from Human Resources since June 8 is an automatic out of office message, sent from your address twenty seconds after my letter arrived on September 5. On September 6 at 2:09 PM Eastern I received a read receipt from Sarah Coole, the Chief Operating Officer. The letter was opened. Nobody answered it.

Look at that automatic reply. It arrived on Saturday, September 5, after both days it named had already passed. It said you were out “Thursday and Friday; 09/03 and 09/04/2026, and Monday, 09/07/2025 is a holiday.” There was no Monday, September 7, 2025. That date was a Sunday. It said, “I will respond to you upon my return.” By its own dates, you were due back Tuesday, September 8. That was ten days ago. The only message Human Resources has sent me in 102 days was out of date when it arrived, had the wrong year in it, and promised a response that never came. Ten people were copied on the letter that triggered it. Did anyone notice? Did anyone fix it? If this letter gets the same automatic reply, that is the answer.

Today is day 102.

Here is the record.

On June 8, 2026 I sent you a written complaint. Eleven people were copied. The Bar’s own mail server confirmed delivery to you and to every gabar.org address on it. I supplemented it on June 10. I sent 24 questions on June 16. I sent 17 outstanding access questions on June 17. You were copied on my June 26 letter about 42 days of silence. I wrote again on September 5 with nine numbered questions and a deadline.

Human Resources has never acknowledged the complaint, assigned it a number, named a reviewer, confirmed a conflict screen, confirmed preservation, identified a referral, or described any review. Not one human word in 102 days.

I asked one question before all the others. Did State Bar Human Resources forward my complaint to Human Resources at the Judicial Council and Administrative Office of the Courts, refer it somewhere else, handle it inside State Bar Human Resources, or do nothing with it. Four options. I said that if none of them was accurate, describe what did happen.

Silence is not one of the four.

On May 12, 2026 at 2:12 PM, Mr. NeSmith, Deputy General Counsel, wrote to me: “Although the State Bar serves as an administrative arm of the Supreme Court of Georgia pursuant to the Court’s authority over the regulation of the legal profession, it nevertheless remains a private, member-funded, and member-governed organization. The State Bar of Georgia is not a department or agency of the State of Georgia, therefore we are not required to have a published ADA Coordinator.”

The same day, a motion to dismiss was filed in federal court on behalf of the State Bar of Georgia Foundation, Inc., the State Bar of Georgia Office of General Counsel, and ████████████████████ Mignott v. State Bar of Georgia Foundation, Inc., N.D. Ga. No. 1:23-cv-01834, Doc. 46, filed May 12, 2026. One of those movants is Mr. NeSmith’s own office. The motion quotes Cohran v. State Bar of Georgia, 790 F. Supp. 1568, 1575 (N.D. Ga. 1992): “The State Bar is an arm of the Georgia Supreme Court. … Therefore, the claims for compensatory damages against all defendants are, in reality, claims against the state and are barred by the Eleventh Amendment.”

24 hours. 2 audiences. 2 different answers from the State Bar of Georgia. To me, it is private. To a federal court, it is the state.

I am not asking you to reconcile those two sentences. I am asking what I asked on June 8. Where did my complaint go.

In my September 5 letter I asked, for the seventh time, for the State Bar’s insurance information. Carrier, policy number, limits, whether the carrier has been notified, any reservation of rights, and who handles claims against the State Bar. That request is more than four months old. It has never been refused. It was used once, on May 15, as the stated reason to stop corresponding with me.

This is the eighth time I am asking.

Here is what I will do now, so that none of it is a surprise.

I will treat this expired deadline as a failure by State Bar Human Resources to respond to a written complaint from a member of the public, and I will rely on that failure in any legal, regulatory, or public forum where the State Bar’s handling of disability complaints is at issue.

I will treat the four options as unanswered. The State Bar has not identified any office, inside itself or outside itself, that accepted responsibility for a complaint against its own lawyers.

The preservation demand in my June 8 complaint stands and is repeated here in full. Nothing identified in it may be destroyed, altered, deleted, overwritten, or lost to routine retention. Under the Bar’s own Rule 4-224(a)(1), a grievance closed by the Office of the General Counsel after screening is expunged after one year. The April 10 dismissal has never been withdrawn, vacated, superseded, corrected, or limited in writing. Destruction after this notice would be spoliation.

None of this is what I asked for.

I asked where a disabled person files a complaint. I asked the Office of the General Counsel. I asked the designated ADA Coordinator. I asked Human Resources. I found the courts’ own ADA grievance procedure myself, published in January 2026.

Eleven people were copied on my June 8 complaint. Ten of them are lawyers. Two have served as President of the State Bar of Georgia, an office that holds a seat on the Judicial Council.

Not one of them gave me an address.

Attached: Mr. NeSmith’s May 12, 2026 email to me, Doc. 46 as filed on May 12, 2026, and your September 5 automatic reply.

If any part of this letter is inaccurate, tell me which part and I will correct it in writing the same day.

I will keep asking. Day 103 starts at midnight.

Respectfully,

██████ ███████

I am a person with a disability. I request written communication by email in an accessible electronic format as a reasonable modification and for effective communication under 28 C.F.R. §§ 35.130(b)(7) and 35.160. I use assistive technology to prepare written communications, so please allow for occasional typographical errors and identify any portion that requires clarification.