(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Bar discipline enforcement reached John Eastman, the legal scholar who questioned the legality of certifying the 2020 presidential election.
Eastman on Wednesday lost his final bid to salvage his California law license after the California Supreme Court declined to overturn a lower court ruling.
The action follows a disciplinary process that began after Eastman was among the attorneys who pushed for the 2020 election results to be properly investigated before certification to Joe Biden.
A judge in the California State Bar Court ordered his disbarment in 2024, according to Politico. Eastman appealed the ruling but was nonetheless barred from practicing law during the process.
According to the outlet, while the California Supreme Court’s decision applies only to that state, other jurisdictions often take similar disbarment actions into account.
Eastman’s Washington, D.C., license was already suspended.
The ruling was met with sharp backlash, as Eastman is considered one of the most prominent legal scholars in the conservative movement and in the field of constitutional law.
The California Supreme Court sent a clear and terrorizing message:
If attorneys represent disfavored political candidates who challenge disputed elections, California will disbar them.
While this happens in failed third-world countries, this should never happen in America. https://t.co/AuMtAULoIy
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) April 15, 2026
He is the founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and a senior fellow at the organization.
He previously taught at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from 1996 to 1997.
He has authored multiple scholarly publications.
Court records show he was also ordered to pay $5,000 in monetary sanctions.
Eastman’s attorney, Randall Miller, criticized the decision, vowing to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The California Supreme Court has allowed to stand a State Bar Court recommendation that we contend departs from long-standing United States Supreme Court precedent protecting First Amendment rights, especially in the attorney discipline context,” Miller said. “We disagree with that outcome and believe it raises pivotal constitutional concerns regarding the limits of state regulation of attorney speech.”
Miller stated he expects the U.S. Supreme Court “to repudiate this threat to the rule of law and our nation’s adversarial system of justice.”
