The Disabled Dad’s Journal

The guide

The Story So Far

The Story So Far tells the Georgia ADA record in eight episodes, one institution at a time: the State Bar of Georgia, the City of Brookhaven, its Police Department, GIRMA with Gallagher Bassett, Georgia POST and the State ADA Coordinator’s Office. Each episode links to the dated documents.

Episode 1. State Bar of Georgia: Two responses went missing from the file

On February 3 and February 20, 2026, I sent two written rebuttals to the State Bar of Georgia. On April 10, the Bar issued a dismissal stating no rebuttal had been received. On April 21, Assistant General Counsel Leigh Burgess acknowledged in writing that the submissions were received but misclassified and were not added to the file at the time. I did not start this story with a disability accommodation request. I started by asking that the ordinary file handling problem be fixed.

Read the State Bar’s April 21 admission

Episode 2. State Bar of Georgia: The question of access

On April 30, 2026, I sent the State ADA Coordinator’s Office an urgent request for help with ADA access. On May 12, Deputy General Counsel William D. NeSmith III wrote that the Bar was not a public entity. On May 13, the Bar’s ADA Coordinator, John J. Shiptenko, wrote: “The State Bar has approved your accommodation request.” On May 29, Shiptenko wrote that the Bar was not subject to Title II. The question was how to use a grievance process when the file and access route were both in dispute.

Read the State Bar ADA access record

Episode 3. City of Brookhaven: Three questions about my lawyer and a $49,385 estimate

On January 23, 2026, City Attorney Jeremy T. Berry began a series of questions about who my lawyer was. That same day, City Manager Christian Sigman declined “any meetings in the near-term.” I turned to the Open Records Act. On March 2, the City estimated one request at $49,385. Across 31 fee demands, the quoted total reached $58,603.85. A simple attempt at contact had become a documented question about what obtaining the City’s records would cost.

Read what the City of Brookhaven did, by date

Episode 4. Brookhaven Police Department: Two speeds for records

The Brookhaven Police Department published an average response time to public records requests of about 1.3 days. My requests averaged 60. The department’s record shows February 23 referrals to the City Clerk and closures on March 5 and March 19. On February 24, 2026, I renewed my written request to communicate by email as a disability accommodation. The 1.3 days is the department’s own published figure. The 60 is the average on my requests.

Read the Brookhaven Police Department record in my words

Episode 5. GIRMA, GMA, and Gallagher Bassett: One case, eight claim numbers

One case became eight claim numbers. Between March 10 and March 12, 2026, Gallagher Bassett’s intake system generated seven claim reports. On March 13, 2026, Belinda Boscoe, Senior Resolution Manager at Gallagher Bassett, wrote that the numerous emails sent to its claim intake department “were mistakenly set up as new claims.” That same morning I was asking for a usable disability access contact and a phone call.

Read the GIRMA, GMA, and Gallagher Bassett record

Episode 6. GIRMA, GMA, and Gallagher Bassett: The lawyer’s May 1 letter

On May 1, 2026, outside counsel James R. Westbury, Jr. described the ADA correspondence as harassment and asked what my disability was. His letter is one of the dated documents in the claims record. The earlier requests and the lawyer’s response belong side by side, rather than allowing his description to stand alone. This chapter records what was asked, what was written back, and who the correspondence came from.

Read what GIRMA’s outside counsel wrote on May 1

Episode 7. Georgia POST: The agency’s own response record

I asked Georgia POST about disability access and a usable written process. Its correspondence later showed how the request moved inside the agency. On August 6, 2026, the agency’s ADA Coordinator forwarded a State ADA Coordinator’s Office inquiry about POST’s Title II contact and grievance procedure to Executive Director Chris Harvey. She wrote: “I am not sure how to respond to this.” The next day, August 7, POST’s Title II notice, grievance procedure and complaint form appeared on its website. Those dates show the sequence without inventing what anybody intended.

Read Georgia POST’s correspondence

Episode 8. State ADA Coordinator’s Office: An answer in writing

The State ADA Coordinator’s Office responded to my requests and contacted the State Bar of Georgia. On May 12, 2026, State ADA Coordinator Stacey Peace answered Senior Assistant General Counsel John J. Shiptenko of the Bar in writing that “there are instances where State Bars have been held to be Title II entities under the ADA” and sent three sources. I received that thread on September 22, 2026, when the State produced its files.

Read the State ADA Coordinator’s Office record

Read the complete continuous narrative

Cold open

State Bar of Georgia: Leigh Burgess Admitted the Rebuttal Was Received

The State Bar of Georgia asked me to send a written rebuttal. I sent two. Its own system confirmed both were received.

Then the dismissal arrived.

It said no rebuttal had been received.

I stared at the letter, then at the receipts. The Bar had asked for the documents. I had sent them. Its system had confirmed them. Somehow, when the decision was made, they were not in the file.

So I did what anyone would do. I sent the proof and asked the Bar to fix the file.

That should have ended the story.

Instead, it started it.

Leigh Burgess sent the admission. The Bar acknowledged that both submissions had been received and left out of the grievance file. But the dismissal still said no rebuttal had been received.

I kept asking a basic question: would the Bar correct its own written file?

The answer never came in a clean, simple sentence.

Read the entry: two replies reached the Bar, and its dismissal said none had.

Episode one

State Bar ADA Access: William D. NeSmith III and John J. Shiptenko

The principal villain. On May 12, 2026, William D. NeSmith III, Deputy General Counsel, told a disabled dad “it does not appear that you require assistance.”

I am a disabled dad. I use adaptive technology because typing is physically difficult.

But I did not begin with the ADA. I did not begin with legal language. I did not ask for special treatment.

I began by asking each institution to fix the ordinary problem in front of it.

Only after the ordinary route failed did I explain what I needed because of my disability.

Deputy General Counsel William D. NeSmith III questioned whether I required help and whether my ADA request was really about access. The next day, John J. Shiptenko approved accommodations in writing. Shiptenko later stated that the Bar’s position remained that it was not subject to Title II.

That distinction matters.

The access requests did not create the confusion. They came after the missing records, unanswered questions, and changing explanations.

Access came second. It always came second.

The hidden door

The State Bar ADA Complaint Form Nobody Told Me About

I kept asking the State Bar for a written route a disabled person could use.

No one sent me to one.

So I searched for it myself.

That is how I found the Bar’s Spanish-language grievance form. It told a person with a disability to contact the ADA Coordinator for help with the complaint process.

The English form did not.

Same institution. Same grievance system. One form showed disabled people a door. The other left the door out.

On May 26, John J. Shiptenko acknowledged both the non-CAPTCHA problem and the difference between the Spanish and English forms. He wrote that he hoped to respond that week.

Then the questions were sorted.

I had placed fifteen open access and process questions into one document to make them easy to answer. Shiptenko ruled that eleven of them were not related to discriminatory treatment and sent them back to William D. NeSmith III, the same Deputy General Counsel who had already cut off substantive correspondence.

I found the route they had never shown me. When I asked why the English form did not carry it, most of the questions were sent back out of the ADA channel.

Episode two

GIRMA, GMA, and Gallagher Bassett: Belinda Boscoe, Eight Claim Numbers, and James Westbury’s Letter

In another part of the story, I went to GIRMA and Gallagher Bassett because I wanted help resolving a problem involving the City of Brookhaven.

Between March 10 and March 12, 2026, over 52 hours, Gallagher Bassett’s intake system generated seven claim reports. Senior Resolution Manager Belinda Boscoe later wrote that they had been “mistakenly set up as new claims.”

I asked what had been created. I asked whether these were seven separate claims or one case divided into pieces. I asked who was responsible for disability access. I asked for one phone call so a human being could explain the process.

The March 13 request received no response.

The March 16 follow-up received no response.

More messages followed. The claim was closed without the requested ADA contact, grievance process, or phone call being provided.

Later, outside counsel James R. Westbury, Jr. described the volume and frequency of my emails as harassment.

I had asked for an explanation. I received another accusation.

Different institution. Different people. A strangely familiar ending: the process became harder to understand, and the work of untangling it came back to me.

Read the entry: one claim, eight claim numbers, and a disability request still unanswered.

The unexpected turn

State of Georgia ADA Coordinator’s Office: The One Office That Treated Access as an ADA Concern

The State of Georgia ADA Coordinator’s Office did something different.

The office is led by State ADA Coordinator Stacey Peace.

It treated the request as a real access concern. It contacted the State Bar. It offered assistance and model materials. It answered written questions without making me prove, again and again, that I deserved an answer.

When I sent a thank-you email on May 14, 2026, the office read it nineteen minutes later and replied fifty-four minutes after I sent it.

That response did not decide the underlying dispute. It did not rule on the merits. It did something more basic.

It showed what normal communication looked like.

The comparator case

Black Attorney Marsha Mignott: Two Years Recommended. One Year Recommended. Zero Discipline.

Before anyone calls my State Bar record isolated, put another public record beside it.

Marsha W. Mignott is a Georgia attorney. The State Bar’s Office of the General Counsel prosecuted her under Rules 1.8(b) and 1.9(c)(2). She brought her federal case as a Black attorney alleging that the Bar’s process treated Black attorneys unequally. That description is hers, from her own complaint.

A Special Master recommended a two-year suspension. The State Disciplinary Review Board recommended one year.

The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously held that the rules cited against Mignott applied to clients and former clients, not prospective clients. The Court imposed no discipline and dismissed the case.

The conduct dated to 2018. The probable-cause notice came in 2020. The unanimous dismissal did not come until 2023. She spent years under a disciplinary case built on rules Georgia’s highest court said did not reach her conduct.

Mignott filed a federal race-discrimination case on April 23, 2023, while the disciplinary case against her was still pending and six months before the Supreme Court ruled. Her complaint names the State Bar of Georgia Foundation, Inc., the State Bar of Georgia Office of the General Counsel, and an assistant general counsel in his official capacity. It alleges they pursued “fraudulent grievances” against Black attorneys and subjected them to “unequal grievance and disciplinary proceedings relative to their white peers.”

Those are Mignott’s allegations, not findings. The Bar has denied them. Its outside counsel told the ABA Journal that race plays no role in its disciplinary cases; that denial appears in the press, not in the filings held here.

But the federal case did not disappear. In July 2025, the Eleventh Circuit vacated the dismissal and sent it back to federal district court. The appellate court noted that Mignott had prevailed in the Georgia Supreme Court, which held she violated no professional-conduct rule. Her discrimination claims remain unresolved on remand.

Episode three

John Shiptenko and William NeSmith Changed the Terms Every Time I Reached the Threshold

By late May, I stopped asking broad questions.

I reduced the central issue to one word: yes or no.

Did Title II of the ADA apply to access to the State Bar of Georgia attorney-grievance process?

John J. Shiptenko did not answer yes or no. He wrote that the Bar’s position remained that it was not subject to Title II, pivoted to Title III, and said the Bar would not engage in litigation-oriented questioning.

The question had become too legal to answer only after I made it impossible to misunderstand.

The harm sat still. Only the terms, channels, roles, and thresholds moved.

The city record

City of Brookhaven: Twenty Open Records Requests, Closed in Five Minutes Thirty Eight Seconds

On March 9, 2026, the City of Brookhaven closed twenty of my open records requests in five minutes and thirty eight seconds. One reason, repeated twenty times. No records.

Every notice stated that the request “has been marked complete due to lack of approval of provided estimate.” The first arrived at 1:01:34 PM Eastern. The last arrived at 1:07:12 PM.

Two weeks earlier, on February 24, 2026, City Manager Christian Sigman wrote that Lillian Young was “no longer with the City of Brookhaven as HR Director.” The City’s published disability page kept naming her as its ADA Coordinator through at least March 10, 2026.

This chapter documents the institutional accessibility record.

Read the entry: twenty requests, one reason, five minutes thirty eight seconds. Visit the City of Brookhaven accessibility record page. Visit the Brookhaven Police Department record page.

The law enforcement standards record

Georgia POST: The ADA Coordinator Who Was Not Sure How to Respond

On August 6, 2026, the ADA Coordinator of the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council wrote, forwarding my request inside her own agency: “See below. I am not sure how to respond to this.”

POST’s Title II notice, its grievance procedure, and its public complaint form appeared on the POST website the next day, August 7, 2026. The State ADA Coordinator’s Office sent me the links that afternoon.

The full Georgia POST correspondence record is published, dated, and linked.

Visit the Georgia POST record page.

The central question

Georgia ADA Accommodation Requests: What I Actually Asked For

Not money. Not a shortcut. Not a guaranteed result.

I wanted to know that documents were received and placed where they belonged. I wanted written communication I could use with adaptive technology. I wanted one responsible contact. I wanted a route that did not require guessing which inbox, form, or person might work that day.

Most of all, I wanted the institutions to correct their own mistakes without making me privately rebuild the process at my own expense.

Those requests were not favors. They were the minimum needed to remain part of the process.

A law older than the institutions’ excuses

The Americans with Disabilities Act Has Been Law Since 1990

That is when I invoked the ADA. Not first. Last. Only after their own systems broke.

The ADA became federal law in 1990.

Spaghetti Junction had just opened. The Braves and Falcons played at the old Fulton County Stadium. Atlanta had not yet been awarded the Olympics. Mobile phones still looked like bricks. Google did not exist. AOL had not yet mailed America a thousand useless CDs. Germany was still two countries.

That is how long Georgia institutions have had to learn one basic thing. Disability is a federal right. The ADA says people with disabilities have the right to equal access, not whatever access an institution feels like giving.

I asked three Georgia institutions to honor a law that outlived their stadiums. Not one of them fixed the problem. Each one turned on the person asking.

I asked for equal access. They answered with accusations, harassment, and delay.

So I stopped asking and started keeping. Every email. Every dodge. Every date.

Every word that matters on this site is theirs. You do not have to believe me. You can read it here: their words, their dates, and the questions they would not answer.

Why this became public

Why ADA Matters Published the Georgia ADA Record

At first, ADA Matters was a filing cabinet.

I needed somewhere to keep hundreds of emails, letters, receipts, claim notices, and attachments in order.

Then a pattern emerged. The documents were answering questions the institutions would not. Dates contradicted explanations. Receipts contradicted dismissals. Approvals sat beside denials. The same simple requests appeared again and again.

That is when the filing cabinet became a story.

This page is the front door. The timeline, questions, and evidence pages are the receipts.

If you read only one chapter, start with the State Bar. It put both sides of the contradiction in writing.