A federal indictment against a lawyer working for LGBTQ+ focused legal defense organization, Lambda Legal, has sparked backlash from advocacy organizations.
Federal prosecutors on Monday unsealed a felony indictment filed in August against Carl Charles. Charles is counsel in the southern regional office of Lambda Legal based in Atlanta.
Prosecutors allege the lawyer made a false statement in front of a panel of judges convened in May 2022 to investigate allegations of “judge-shopping” by LGBTQ+ legal organizations and lawyers associated with the legal challenge to Alabama’s ban on gender-affirming medical treatments for minors put forth in the cases Walker v. Marshall and Ladinsky v. Ivey.
The ban, enacted in 2022, makes prescribing puberty blockers, as well as hormone and surgical therapies to transgender youth, a felony in the state.
“Judge-shopping” allegations were first raised in April 2022 by U.S. District Judge Liles Burke. Burke was appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term.
Charles is accused of lying before the 2022 panel, when he said he had not called any judges regarding the judge assignment of Walker v. Marshall. The prosecution alleges that Charles called District Judge Myron Thompson’s chambers to discuss the filing of Walker, as well as an upcoming request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction as part of the legal challenge. Charles denied he contacted Thompson about the filing under oath.
Charles pleaded not guilty to the charges in a Montgomery federal court on Monday.
The Human Rights Campaign, alongside Lambda Legal has come out in opposition to Charles’ indictment, with the Human Rights Campaign dismissing the case as “politically-motivated and unjust.”
“The news out of Alabama is meant to scare us into silence, but we refuse. We stand with all LGBTQ+ Alabamians, trans youth, Lambda Legal, and every attorney who fights for our collective civil rights. We fight with you. And together, we will win,” wrote Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson in a statement Tuesday regarding Charles’ indictment.
“What we are seeing in Alabama is not new–a selective, targeted weaponization of judicial power meant to intimidate those demanding equality. We saw it during Jim Crow, and now, it’s being used to go after a civil rights lawyer fighting to protect the rights and lives of transgender Alabamians,” Robinson continued.
“This unjustified federal indictment is an outrageous act of governmental overreach. Lambda Legal rejects the notion that the U.S. government can punish lawyers and law firms for exercising their First Amendment rights by speaking up on behalf of causes to which government officials object,” wrote Lambda Legal.
“For more than three years, our colleague, Carl Charles, has been subjected to unprecedented and abusive judicial proceedings, smearing his character and undermining his role in fighting for some of the most vulnerable people in society,” the organization alleged. “We fundamentally disagree with the characterization of the events that underpin this indictment, which ignores the fact that the routine phone call at issue was acknowledged by the court to be entirely legal and proper.”
Charles and two Alabama lawyers were sanctioned and referred for a criminal investigation by Burke in February, following a series of hearings regarding the judge shopping allegations beginning in 2022.
A report from the panel of judges alleged that the Walker and Ladinsky plaintiffs viewed their cases being assigned to Burke as a “bad draw,” with little chance of a ruling in their favor.
Burke and the panel have accused lawyers associated with the challenges of attempting to ”game the system” by voluntarily dismissing Walker and Ladinsky in 2022, after both cases were assigned to Burke.
Such voluntary dismissals by plaintiffs are protected under Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Neither case was initially assigned to Burke. Both legal challenges to the law had multiple assignment changes in the week of April 11, 2022.
The Ladinsky case was first assigned to a judge who recused herself and then reassigned to a magistrate judge who was not agreed upon by all parties, before being randomly reassigned to a Trump appointed judge, Judge Annemarie Axon.
The Walker case, meanwhile, was initially assigned to Judge Emily Marks, also a Trump appointee. Plaintiffs filed a motion to have the case heard by Thompson, citing it as related to another case regarding transgender issues that Thompson ruled on. Thompson ruled in favor of the transgender plaintiffs in that case.
Marks, instead, ordered the transfer of Walker to the Northern District, following discussions between both cases’ teams. The Walker case was initially assigned to Burke, with lawyers in both cases planning a motion to have the two suits consolidated and heard by Axon under the first-filed rule.
Axon, however, transferred Ladinsky to Burke as well, citing that the transfer was “in the interest of efficiency and judicial economy.”
The Walker case was dropped altogether. Meanwhile, the Ladinsky team refiled with additional plaintiffs in the case Boe v. Marshall, which was also assigned to Burke, who ruled in favor of granting the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking the law’s ban on hormone treatments and puberty blockers from going into effect in May 2022.
“Counsels’ misguided fears of prejudice were for naught: the attorneys, who believed their clients’ chances of success before this Court were ‘slim to none,’ won the emergency injunctive relief they had sought in the first instance,” reads Burke’s February filing which sanctioned Charles.
The injunction blocking the law was later lifted in August 2023 by a federal appeals court.
Charles’ case has been scheduled to appear before a U.S. magistrate judge in Montgomery on November 17.
All federal judges for the Middle District of Alabama have recused themselves from hearing the case, and it has been assigned to Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga in the Southern District of Florida.
