By Sheila Suess Kennedy
October 12, 2026
I have wasted far too many pixels over the years on Todd Rokita, Indiana’s pathetic Attorney General. (I really should put quotation marks around “Attorney General,” because Rokita has shown scant interest in the actual job, preferring performative outreach to MAGA partisans.) But once again, he has done something I can’t simply ignore.
Rokita has filed suit against members of the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission for “violating his First Amendment rights to free speech.” And how, you might ask, has the Disciplinary Commission done this? Evidently, by investigating the multiple disciplinary grievances filed against him–grievances that he lists in his complaint, and that the Commission has a duty to investigate. (He also included a grievance initiated by the Commission itself, an investigation into whether Rokita–in a very Trumpy move–had directed his staff to review the voting records and political-donation histories of people who had filed grievances against him.)
Rokita’s filing also revealed that Hoosier taxpayers have paid $491,508 to the private attorneys he has employed to defend against these charges.
I’ve been a First Amendment purist for a long time, but I was unaware that the First Amendment protects officials against inquiries into charges of ethical misconduct. John Krull–who, like yours truly, was once an Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU–has also weighed in on the lawsuit, concluding that complaint “makes clear what his real grievance is. The commission hurt his feelings by examining his most questionable actions.” Krull writes that
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has genuine gifts.
He is spectacularly good at wasting time, squandering taxpayers’ money, starting silly fights and wallowing in self-pity.
On the negative side, though, he has no gift at all for exercising common sense. The poor fellow doesn’t seem to have the wisdom God gave a pet rock.
Krull points out that, by filing the suit, Rokita has publicized the significant number of times his fellow lawyers have filed complaints about his conduct, noting that “Our attorney general has been accused of unprofessional and unethical conduct almost as often as Al Capone was.” Krull also notes that Rokita has used his office to pursue complaints that are entirely personal, including an argument over the purchase of a jet ski. (Last time I looked, the position of Attorney General does not require use of jet skis…)
A lawyer friend of mine who is equally bemused by this recent, additional evidence of Rokita’s cluelessness, supplied me with case law suggesting that Rokita’s suit faces long odds–cases that strongly suggest that suing the Commission is poor strategy–not to mention the blatant impropriety of using our tax dollars to sue the Commission. As he noted, Rokita should be doing that “on his own dime and on his own time.”
Here are a few quotes from the cases my friend supplied.
In the Matter of M. Daniel Friedland, the Court wrote ”
The evidence in this case also demonstrates that Respondent engaged in a pattern of litigation directed toward intimidating and influencing public officials and adverse witnesses. He attempted to use the lawsuit as a weapon against those who administered and prosecuted grievances against him. His motivation is evident from the fact that he directed this litigation at the individuals involved in the grievance process, only tangentially attacking the merits of the issues to be determined through this process. The Respondent wanted to punish the persons who filed grievances, and intimidate the persons who administered the process.
In In Re Terry,
After members of the Ripley County bar initiated a request for investigation of respondent by the Disciplinary Commission, respondent and his agents began a massive publicity campaign to abort the disciplinary proceedings. Petitions were prepared in support of respondent. On February 23, 1974, respondent, in response to a question from the pulpit during a worship service, stated that he had extra petitions in his car for anyone wishing to distribute them. Respondent knew, or should have known, that requests for disciplinary action are not terminated at the outset by publicity campaigns. Disciplinary proceedings will be terminated after initial investigation only if no substantial question of misconduct exists.
And in IN RE: Thomas M. Dixon the Court was directly on point, writing that the “First Amendment protects the societal interest of enabling robust public discourse on issues of public concern, and its protections are therefore necessarily very broad. However, this interest must be balanced against the societal interest in the public’s confidence in an impartial adjudicatory process, which unwarranted public accusations by an attorney against a judicial officer do nothing but weaken and erode.”
A competent lawyer would have researched these (and several similar) precedents before bringing a case that only serves to highlight his unfitness for public office.
Sheila Suess Kennedy is Emerita Professor of Law and Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. As an attorney, she practiced real estate, administrative and business law in Indianapolis before becoming corporation counsel for the City of Indianapolis in 1977. In 1980, she was the Republican candidate for Indiana’s then 11th Congressional District and in 1992, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. She joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environment al Affairs in 1998.
This column was originally published by Sheila Kennedy on her blog, “A Jaundiced Look at the World We Live In.” The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
