Jerk Lawyer Who Threatened To Call ICE On Women Speaking Spanish Earns Censure

Panel cites some curious mitigating factors.

via YouTube

Let us journey back to the heady days of 2018. Back then, there were “restaurants” that one could attend to order food during a busy day working at an “office.” One might pick up a sandwich or perhaps a salad. And, if you picked just the right day, you could watch an attorney go on a bonkers, racist rant against the people making his food because they happened to speak Spanish.

Aaron Schlossberg, a George Washington University Law grad, went to a midtown Fresh Kitchen back in May 2018 and got more than a little peeved when two employees spoke to each other in Spanish. In the parlance of that lost era, “what happens next will surprise you…”

If they have the balls to come here and live off of my money. I paid for their welfare, I paid for their ability to be here….

My guess is, they’re not documented. So my next call is going to be to ICE to have each one of them kicked out of my country.

That’s just a bit of the exchange. Inside Edition found some other video of Schlossberg’s bizarre behavior when they looked into it at the time.

Schlossberg’s firm got nuked in online reviews and he spent most of the next day running away from reporters. Eventually a marachi band camped out in front of his place in a testament to the brand of delightfully cheeky protest that we used to enjoy back in 2018 before people started waving AR-15s at people they disagreed with.

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Now, nearly three years later, we have some resolution on the Schlossberg tale. In a new disciplinary opinion, a five-jurist panel ruled that he would merely be publicly censured pursuant to a joint agreement between Schlossberg and the grievance committee. Per the New York Law Journal:

“We agree,” continued the panel, writing it found “that the imposition of a public censure under these circumstances is in accord with precedent,” while citing five previous First Department decisions including Matter of Wilens & Baker, 9 AD3d 213 [1st Dept 2004].

Stopping short at a censure was based in part on Schlossberg’s cooperation in the investigation, but also representations that his behavior in this instance was an outlier:

… respondent has no prior discipline, nor have any complaints been made against him since the AGC commenced investigation of the 2018 incident at Fresh Kitchen… and respondent repudiated his conduct as indefensible at his examination before the AGC… and he rejects and repudiates any notion that an individual’s race or national origin controls or limits their worth or right to equal protection under the law.

That certainly doesn’t track the video Inside Edition showed earlier evincing that denigrating people based on his perception of their race and ethnicity is not an isolated incident. And, frankly, he crossed over the line that this doesn’t speak to his conception of equal protection under the law when he threatened to involve law enforcement based solely on the language people were speaking. It’s one thing for a lawyer to air their opinions about immigration policy as a matter of free speech, but once they start threatening law enforcement, it speaks to an attorney’s conception of the function of the law and equal protection in ways that a post facto, settlement-influenced apology can’t fully wipe away.

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That’s not to say that this wasn’t ultimately the right penalty — just that it seems incredible to include these specific factors when his cooperation and the fact that this was the first reported incident and no further incidents have been reported were likely more than enough to limit the punishment to censure.

Not that there were going to be many more reported incidents since no one has seen anyone else for a year.

In any event, hopefully this does serve as proper punishment and we never have occasion to hear about this guy again. One can dream that 2021 will be better anyway.

Manhattan Attorney Whose Racist Rant Went Viral Is Publicly Censured [New York Law Journal]

Jerk Videotaped Threatening To Call ICE On Two Women Speaking Spanish TO EACH OTHER — Obviously He’s A Lawyer
Aaron Schlossberg Is Having A Delightfully Bad Day
A Musical Interlude With Aaron Schlossberg
Lawyer Sued For Malpractice For Going All Racist On Camera


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.