By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
June 18, 2025
As Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita is trying to get a second disciplinary investigation into his conduct dismissed, the state’s top lawyer was subjected to “corrective action” earlier this year from the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission.
The punishment, for which the disciplinary commission did not release any details, was in response to a complaint filed for comments Rokita made during an April 2024 news conference related to the Indiana Department of Health’s decision to quit allowing public access to the terminated pregnancy reports. Subsequently, Indianapolis attorney William Groth filed a complaint, asserting Rokita ran afoul of the Indiana Rules for Professional Conduct for lawyers by disregarding the needs and desires of the IDOH, which the attorney general has a statutory duty to represent in legal matters.
In a letter sent to Groth on April 24, 2025, Adrienne Meiring, executive director of the disciplinary commission, indicated the attorney general had been given some kind of penalty for his comments at the TPR news conference. It did not disclose the nature of the punishment or the specific reasons for the rebuke.
“After (an) investigation, corrective action was taken against attorney Rokita, which is confidential,” Meiring wrote. “Thank you for bringing this matter to the attention of the Disciplinary Commission. This matter is now closed.”
Rokita downplayed the matter to The Indiana Citizen.
“Groth’s grievance was dismissed, no sanction was issued, and we were told no further action was needed on this matter,” communications director Ben Fearnow said. “Beyond that, we are not going to comment on confidential discussions with the disciplinary commission.”
The Indiana Supreme Court also declined to discuss the complaint or provide any additional details about the discipline meted out to Rokita.
In response to an inquiry from The Citizen, a spokesman for the Supreme Court pointed to Indiana Admission and Discipline Rule 23, Section 22, which governs disciplinary documents and information. The list of materials that are confidential and not available to the public include conditional agreements, advisory letters, and any responses from respondents, private administrative admonition letters, resignation affidavits, and affidavits consenting to disbarment.
However, Sections 10 and 12.1 in Rule 23 provide some clues as to what the “corrective action” might have entailed.
Rokita could have received a caution letter from Meiring if she determined the complaint raised a “substantial question of misconduct.” That letter could have been a warning against engaging in the conduct again or could have included both a method for remedying the violation and a deadline for Rokita to comply to avoid any further discipline.
Or Rokita could have been given a private administrative admonition. This kind of discipline generally happens when the disciplinary commission determines that reasonable cause exists to support the allegation of misconduct, but it would probably not result in discipline greater than a public reprimand. Also, the admonition is different from a private reprimand, which is given after a complaint is filed and regardless of the respondent’s consent. Any private admonition, which would be given without filing a disciplinary complaint and by agreement between the commission and Rokita, would be public record but the accompanying letter would be confidential.
Rokita called the news conference in April 2024 to highlight the advisory opinion he had issued in which he contended that the terminated pregnancy reports are not confidential medical records – a position contrary to an opinion from the Indiana public access counselor and two trial court decisions. Also, Rokita asserted, without evidence, that the health department had colluded with the public access counselor and that anyone denied access to the reports should consider suing the health department.
In his complaint to the disciplinary commission, Groth said Rokita violated two professional conduct rules. The attorney general broke the rules, Groth alleged, when he offered his opinion about TPRs even though the health department had not asked for his legal advice and when he suggested that members of the public might sue the health department to get access to the reports.
The “corrective action” is the latest known development in the attorney general’s ongoing encounters with the disciplinary commission. In November of 2023, he was publicly reprimanded for misconduct by the Indiana Supreme Court, and he is currently facing a second complaint for misconduct filed by the commission in January of this year.
The attorney disciplinary process is confidential and very private. Any grievances filed and any investigations are typically not disclosed to the public unless the commission files a complaint and opens a case against the lawyer. A vast majority of the grievances filed are summarily dismissed for lacking a valid issue of misconduct. According to the Indiana Supreme Court’s annual report, the disciplinary commission outright dismissed 79%, 92% and 79% of the grievances filed during the 2024, 2023 and 2022 fiscal years, respectively.
Again, pointing to admission and discipline Rule 23, the Indiana Supreme Court declined to provide the total number of grievances filed against Rokita since he started his tenure as attorney general in January 2021 as well as those filed against his three Republican predecessors, Curtis Hill, Greg Zoeller and Steve Carter. All proceedings and papers related to a disciplinary matter are confidential unless the commission files a complaint, the rule states.
However, while the disciplinary commission cannot publicly reveal its ongoing internal deliberations, attorneys and members of the public can speak openly about any grievances they have filed or investigations of which they are aware.
Most recently, Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, announced in May she had filed a grievance against Rokita for comments he made about her on a podcast. The state’s top lawyer alleged that Brown told him that she has a family member who is undocumented and, he said, that is why she killed House Bill 1531, an immigration measure, during the 2025 legislative session, according to The Indy Star. Calling Rokita’s accusation “blatantly false,” Brown said she had filed a grievance with the disciplinary commission.
Through her Statehouse office, the senator declined to discuss the specifics of her complaint when contacted by The Citizen. Also, she did not say whether the commission had notified her that an investigation had been launched into Rokita’s conduct.
Also, in October 2024, Indiana political commentator and attorney Abdul-Hakim Shabazz filed a grievance against Rokita for remarks the attorney general made during a televised debate with his Democratic challenger, Destiny Wells, for the November general election.
Rokita accused Wells of resigning her previous position as a deputy attorney general under Hill because of money. “You quit because you didn’t get enough pay,” Rokita told Wells. “Other people stayed because they didn’t care about pay.”
In his complaint, Shabazz asserted the attorney violated Indiana Code 5-14-3-4, which governs records exempted from public disclosure. Shabazz noted Wells did resign over a dispute involving veteran’s pay, but, under state law, that information is confidential.
The disciplinary commission did respond to his grievance, Shabazz said, and suggested he file a complaint with the Indiana Election Division. Whether the commission did any kind of investigation of Shabazz’s complaint is unknown.
Shabazz told The Citizen he expects to file a formal complaint with the election division in the near future.
Rokita has complained angrily to the Indiana Supreme Court about the attorney disciplinary process, saying the commission has allowed the proceedings to be weaponized by sending notifications of investigations to the grievants, who then “leak those communications” to the press. In a letter to the justices and Justin Forkner, the chief administrative officer for the Indiana Office of Judicial Administration, Rokita accused the commission of political bias and said its disclosure of confidential information was “chilling the protected speech of candidates and office holders who are carrying out their duties or otherwise executing the discretion given to them by voters and taxpayers.”
The attorney general also indicated that other grievances were filed against him for warning a national retailer about its “promotion of gender and sexual identity among children”; filing an amicus brief when Trump v. Anderson was pending before the U.S. Supreme Court; and warning Fortune 500 companies that they could face legal action for their DEI policies and practices.
Rokita proposed a series of amendments to the state’s attorney discipline rules. These proposals include prohibiting the disciplinary commission from communicating any of its investigative measures to the grievants before the end of the process and limiting grievants’ immunity from civil liability to only “good-faith grievances.”
Not all grievances are filed by attorneys. Indianapolis resident Sarah Ratekin submitted a complaint to the disciplinary commission in April, after she felt Rokita had gone too far in an April Fools’ joke he posted to social media.
Ratekin invested a lot of time in writing her grievance. She researched the attorney rules of professional conduct and included citations to the rules in her complaint to “add a little spice,” she said, and possibly stop it from being tossed into the trash can. Still, she does not believe Rokita will face any punishment for his actions.
“I’m fairly convinced the process is fundamentally broken, and I knew that going into it,” Ratekin said. “So I’m well aware that there is sort of this band of brothers in many professions, including the legal profession, that insulates their members from fallout as much as possible. So I wasn’t expecting this to be like some kind of transformational moment where justice was served.”
In the social media post that sparked Ratekin’s complaint, Rokita paired two pictures of himself outside his office in the Statehouse standing next to two different flags. In the first photo, he is beside a rainbow LGBTQ flag, claiming he had been brainwashed by “the Left” into removing the black-and-white “Come and Take It” flag. In the second photo, the “Come and Take It” flag is back and Rokita is declaring “April Fools!”
Ratekin, a veteran of the U.S. Navy who identifies as queer, saw the attorney general as “using my community as the butt of a joke” and then juxtaposing the symbol of LGBTQ against a flag linked to white supremacy.
“This is unacceptable,” Ratekin said. “I come from a long line of veterans. … I just feel like we have put our lives on the line for this country to represent all Americans and (then) to have our elected officials flex their absolute disdain for huge sections of our fellow citizenry as for what? An April Fools’ joke?”
Ratekin did not keep the matter private. She posted her complaint on her social media account and then she put the response from the disciplinary commission on there as well.
In the letter, Meiring, the commission’s executive director, confirmed receipt of Ratekin’s complaint and sketched the disciplinary process going forward.
“It will be reviewed by a staff attorney,” Meiring wrote to Ratekin. “The investigation process is confidential. Therefore, the staff is very limited in its ability to communicate with you while the investigation is ongoing. Further communications from this office might occur if more information is needed.”
Regardless of what happens to her complaint, Ratekin said her goal was to show others they do not have to be silent when they see an action by an elected official that offends them.
“Part of my motivation here was to not only, like, encourage my fellow citizens to also speak up against what I see is poor behavior by our elected officials, but also to showcase that sometimes when you speak up, at least, you get a little bit of traction,” Ratekin said. “I think there’s a sentiment that we as lowly citizens don’t have a lot of sway and that’s for sure true, but it’s awfully nice to see that occasionally, (the officials) perk up a little bit and follow through on these considerations.”
Former Indiana University Bloomington Provost Lauren Robel broke the silence on filing grievances against the attorney general in the summer of 2022, when she released a letter she had sent to Meiring urging the disciplinary commission to investigate Rokita. Several Indiana law professors followed by issuing a public letter against Rokita, and retired Judge John Tinder of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and former 5th District Congresswoman Susan Brooks, R-Indiana, rebuked Rokita in a column published by The Wall Street Journal.
The collective ire was ignited by Rokita’s remarks and conduct toward Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis OB/GYN. When Bernard made national headlines for performing a legal abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio, Indiana’s top lawyer opened an investigation of the physician and made controversial comments about her on national television.
As a result, the disciplinary commission investigated Rokita and agreed to settle the matter with a public reprimand in November 2023. Bernard had also been reprimanded and fined $3,000 in May 2023 by the Indiana Medical Licensing Board for talking publicly about the abortion on the 10-year-old.
After Rokita issued a fiery response to his public reprimand, Groth and another Indianapolis attorney, Paula Cardoza-Jones, revealed the grievances they had filed, alleging Rokita had lied to the Indiana Supreme Court. The disciplinary commission filed a complaint in January of this year, which Rokita is trying to get the court to dismiss.
If the Supreme Court does not grant Rokita’s motion to dismiss, the disciplinary process could proceed to a public hearing.
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
