ADA matters because people matter
ADA matters because people matter
Tag: William NeSmith
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June 16, 2026. I waited past the June 15 date the State Bar of Georgia itself had given me, then sent a consolidated reconsideration reply with twenty-four written questions and exhibits to ADA Coordinator John J. Shiptenko and the full leadership group. He replied the same day, answered none of the twenty-four, and stripped the…
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June 10, 2026. Days after the State Bar of Georgia told me it read nothing in my emails as an accommodation request, ADA Coordinator John J. Shiptenko sent a proactive, substantive status update, on his own initiative, when it suited the Bar. He confirmed the timeline: “the State Bar approved your accommodation request, and Ms.…
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June 8, 2026. When the State Bar of Georgia’s own grievance office had recharacterized my disability requests as pretext, I went over its head. I sent a misconduct, harassment and retaliation ADA complaint to the Bar’s Director of Human Resources and eleven leadership and Board officers, with an immediate-preservation demand. The core of it was…
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June 2, 2026. A day after I reported that my State Bar of Georgia complaint generated no confirmation it arrived, ADA Coordinator John J. Shiptenko replied, confirmed receipt, and then shrank his own job description. “correspondence to me regarding the grievance process should only be used to submit requests for accommodations under the ADA.” In…
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May 29, 2026. I asked the State Bar of Georgia a yes-or-no question. ADA Coordinator John J. Shiptenko answered with a litigating position and a deadline that came and went. “To be clear, the State Bar’s position remains that it is not subject to Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.” That was the…
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May 27, 2026. After weeks of the State Bar of Georgia talking around it, I cut the whole dispute down to one sentence and put it in front of ADA Coordinator John J. Shiptenko. “Does the State Bar of Georgia agree that Title II of the ADA applies to access to its attorney-grievance process, yes…
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May 26, 2026. After weeks of being told to send this to one person and that to another, I tried the obvious fix. I put everything in a single document. The State Bar of Georgia mostly mailed it back. I sent the ADA Coordinator, John J. Shiptenko, a consolidated follow-up with fifteen open process and…
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May 15, 2026. I could not file by myself. The only route ran through a CAPTCHA my assistive technology cannot pass, so filing waited on whenever a family member was free. Access “depended on another person’s schedule, not [my] choice.” When I did file, against two of the Bar’s own deputies, the State Bar of…
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May 14, 2026. The clock the Bar set ran out at 5:00 p.m. Nothing was fixed. Not one item. This was cure-window day, the deadline I had given the State Bar of Georgia to correct a dismissal its own lawyer had already admitted was built on a misrouted file. By morning I had sent leadership…
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May 13, 2026. Twelve hours. That is all it took for the State Bar of Georgia to prove, on its own, why I had been begging for one point of contact. It started at 7:34 a.m., when Deputy General Counsel William D. NeSmith III pulled the meeting he had offered the day before. “The 11:30…