Calls are pouring in for the U.S. Supreme Court to take up and stop California’s ongoing barfare against constitutional attorney John Eastman.
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) filed amicus briefs on Tuesday urging the nation’s highest court to hear arguments in Eastman v. State Bar of California during its 2026 term. At least four justices must agree to hear a case before it can be considered by the full court.
At issue is California’s recent decision to strip Eastman of his law license over legal advice he gave President Donald Trump regarding the latter’s 2020 election challenges. The Claremont Institute senior fellow is one of several conservative attorneys targeted by the left’s barfare machine for his 2020 election conduct, with other notable victims including Ken Paxton and Jeff Clark, who signed onto the Oversight Project’s amicus filing as part of his role with the organization.
In their briefs, the Oversight Project and AFPI laid out several arguments on why the Supreme Court should grant Eastman’s petition to take up his case.
The Oversight Project contended that the California Supreme Court’s decision affirming Eastman’s disbarment rules afoul of the Constitution’s supremacy clause because the California Bar’s Review Department “conceded that strict scrutiny governs Eastman’s core political speech” advising the president, “then announced that the standard mattered only ‘[t]o the extent’ it was ‘relevant.'” “State tribunals,” the group reasoned, “cannot demote this Court’s First Amendment holdings to optional reading.”
The Heritage-aligned organization further argued that the California Supreme Court’s decision should be vacated because SCOTUS’s precedents indicate that the issues at play are strictly federal matters. “Put together, California had no authority to disbar Eastman on this record,” the brief reads.
Meanwhile, AFPI described Eastman’s disbarment as “the culmination” of the left’s ongoing barfare campaign targeting conservative lawyers they disagree with. Allowing such a scheme to succeed against Eastman, they noted, “threatens attorney independence, the right to counsel, and public trust in the integrity of the profession.”
“State bar regulated attorney discipline exists to protect the public and ensure that political influences present in everyday politics do not dictate attorney-client relationships or infect the integrity of the profession,” the filing reads. “Hijacking attorney disciplinary processes for political vendettas harms not only attorneys and their clients, but also the public’s trust in the fairness and impartiality of our judicial system.”
“Amici call upon this Court, the Court of last resort for Petitioner and many others, to protect the independence and neutrality of state bar disciplinary proceedings from outside organizations and maligned actors who seek to weaponize those proceedings against their political and ideological opponents,” it added.
The AFPI brief was signed by Conservative Partnership Institute senior legal fellow Cleta Mitchell, Judicial Watch senior attorney Christina Bobb, former Trump Justice Department senior official Ed Martin, and numerous others.
The Supreme Court has not scheduled Eastman’s petition for distribution at any of its upcoming conferences as of this article’s publication, according to the case’s docket file.
