According to an exclusive report Since rolling stoneSupreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s husband, Jesse Barrett, is now representing Fox Corporation in a $3 million defamation suit, raising questions about conflicts of interest and personal enrichment enjoyed by conservative judges of the Supreme Court.
As rolling stone points out, the case is notable because Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, directly pays the family of a Supreme Court justice, something neither Barrett nor her husband are required to disclose. Barrett’s husband is a managing partner at SouthBank Legal, which opened its Washington office, led by Barrett, after his wife joined the Supreme Court. List of anonymized Jesse Barrett cases on SouthBank Legal website NOW includes “represented a leading media company in a defamation lawsuit.” This addition already joins long list of white-collar business on his company profile, between defending a Berkshire Hathaway company in an employment discrimination lawsuit and defending an event planner against fraud claims.
The defamation lawsuit filed by Jessee Barrett alleges that Fox 32, a local Fox station in the Chicago area, ran a hit piece about Lavell Redmond who, in 2021, was hired by the mayor of Dolton, Illinois to work as a building code enforcement officer. The Fox report centers Redmond’s conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a minor, to which he pleaded guilty and served 24 years in prison, as the crux of the story while claiming that Redmond was hired to get “into homes and businesses in Dolton to inspect them.” Redmond disputes this assertion in his lawsuit, according to rolling stoneemphasizing that his job was to inspect the exterior of buildings and not to enter homes.
The exit later followed his report by announcing that Redmond had been arrested and could face new charges for violating conditions of the sex offender registry – a charge that Redmond claims was a direct result of Fox’s previous misleading reporting about his job duties.
Barrett, representing Fox, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, according to rolling stone. The motion to dismiss claims the complaint was filed too late and the company did not commit defamation because “the gist” of the reporting was “unquestionably true” and characterized the central outrage of Redmond’s hiring : that a sex offender was breaking into people’s homes. , which resulted in his arrest – as “insignificant details”.
While the relationship between conservative and right-wing judges continually raises ethical concerns, constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis noted that the chances of the Fox Corporation case going to the conservative-held Supreme Court, are slim given Barrett is expected to recuse herself from the case. winnow the number of Smart judges from Fox News in the field.
“You do not hire the spouse of a Supreme Court justice to represent you in major litigation unless (1) you believe he or she is competent to do so and (2) you do not plan to go to the Supreme Court where the spouse would do so. you will have to recuse yourself and you might really want/need their vote,” Kreis wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Either way, it’s all too convenient that the husband of a conservative Supreme Court justice represents a conservative media company and asks curious questions about why Barrett, who is based in Washington, was chosen to represent the Washington-based media company. New York City for a lawsuit filed by a man in Illinois.
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