Malik Leigh v. State Bar of Florida

Whether disciplining or disbarring a civil rights attorney for speech critical of judicial bias and racial injustice violates the First Amendment, especially when the alleged conduct involved no harm to clients, no criminality, and was overtly expressive in nature.

Whether the racially disparate treatment and eventual disbarment of Petitioner, while white attorneys with more egregious conduct were not disciplined, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Whether the Florida Supreme Court’s arbitrary procedures, reliance on tainted referrals, and imposition of disproportionate sanctions violated Petitioner’s rights to procedural and substantive Due Process.

Whether the Thirteenth Amendment affords parens patriae special protection to Black Americans (descendants of Freedmen) and imposes a strict constitutional liability standard on federal and state actors to prevent any badge or incident of racial subjugation—violated here by the targeting, discipline, and disbarment of Petitioner for racial truth-telling.