The National Lawyers Guild Chicago condemns the recent actions of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC), which attempted to sanction Sheryl Ring, Esq, an Illinois attorney, for filing a federal lawsuit against the ARDC last month for their refusal to prohibit discrimination against transgender and gender nonconforming attorneys and litigants. While we are pleased to see that the ARDC has now stated that this attempt was done so in error, we join Ms. Ring in demanding that the ARDC prohibit attorneys and judges from engaging in gender identity discrimination against any attorney practicing law in the State of Illinois.
Post-Bostock, 47 States —all but Illinois, Alabama, and Mississippi—prohibit lawyers and judges from engaging in gender identity discrimination in their Rules of Professional Conduct; the ARDC is the only State agency in Illinois to ignore Bostock. The ARDC actively discriminates against transgender Illinois attorneys on the basis of sex and gender identity through ongoing practices of outing and deadnaming transgender attorneys.
The ARDC is meant to be an avenue of transparency and accountability for residents in the state—to ensure that attorneys practice in alignment with the profession’s ethical standards, policies, and procedures. The ARDC’s purpose is to regulate the legal profession to ensure that clients and the broader public are protected from misconduct. The ARDC is not a weapon to be wielded against transgender and gender non-conforming attorneys.
The guiding principle of the National Lawyers Guild is that human rights and the rights of ecosystems shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests. It is profoundly disturbing–to the point of professional incompetence– that the state’s key accountability body for attorneys has not moved to prohibit discrimination against transgender attorneys in their policies and procedures.
We demand that the ARDC immediately end the practice of discrimination against transgender attorneys in the State of Illinois. Ms. Ring has repeatedly stated that she simply wants the State of Illinois and the ARDC to refrain from discrimination on the basis of gender-identity. Ending discrimination against transgender attorneys is the only moral path forward for the ARDC whose stated mission is “promoting and protecting the integrity of the legal profession.”
