Amy Coney Barrett's Husband Works On Behalf Of Fox Affiliate And That's Actually Not A Big Deal
Breaking: Amy Coney Barrett's husband is a lawyer!
Amy Coney Barrett and Jesse Barrett on the steps of the Supreme Court (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett’s husband, Jesse Barrett, is a parter at SouthBank Legal. That, in and of itself, isn’t a problem. The issue is she won’t disclose who her husband’s clients are. In her disclosure forms she even went so far as to redact the name of his firm, despite that information being public knowledge. And without knowing who her husband is working for, the public has no way of knowing if one of Jesse Barrett’s clients has business before the Court.
Which leaves it to journalists to suss it out. Today, Rolling Stone is reporting that Jesse Barrett works on behalf of Fox in a defamation case.
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The defamation case was filed by Lavell Redmond, an Illinois man who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault as a minor and served 24 years in prison. Redmond was hired as a code enforcement officer by the mayor of Dolton in 2021, the original complaint says.
He is suing Fox over a series of reports that scandalized his hiring — the first of which claimed he had been hired for “a job in which he goes into Dolton homes and businesses to inspect them.” The complaint says that “as a code enforcement officer, Redmond was never responsible for entering village resident’s homes to do his job, nor did he ever enter village resident’s homes. Redmond only had the ability to observe home exteriors to write code violations.”
Redmond alleges that “FOX 32’s reporting directly led to Redmond being arrested and wrongfully charged with violating the reporting requirements of the sex offender registry,” as well as his subsequent termination.
This may be news, but it is not an ethical issue.
My former colleague Elie Mystal is 100% on the money with this one. Jesse Barrett is a lawyer, this is what lawyers do… it’s a non-issue.
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…Unless, of course, the case somehow winds up before the Supreme Court and Coney Barrett doesn’t recuse herself. Which, again, we have no way of knowing as long as Coney Barrett refuses to disclose the list of her husband’s clients. So this “bad press” is only happening because Coney Barrett remains tight lipped about her husband’s work.
Maybe Coney Barrett needs to look into the Streisand effect.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].
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