John Krull
So, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s cruel, costly crusade to persecute Dr. Caitlin Bernard ends not with a bang, but a whimper.
A few days ago, his office asked the Southern Indiana District Court to dismiss a federal lawsuit the office had filed against IU Health, Bernard’s employer. That suit claimed the hospital hadn’t followed proper procedures for protecting patient privacy when Bernard confirmed to an Indianapolis Star reporter two years ago that she had performed a legal abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had been raped.
Rokita’s underlings in the attorney general’s office tried to present the suit’s dismissal as a victory of sorts. They said they were dropping Rokita’s ill-advised legal action because the hospital had taken steps to prevent any future problems — and they pointed to a media-request policy that is standard for almost every business and nonprofit in the country as evidence of their win.
In truth, Rokita slunk away from the field of battle so he wouldn’t have to take the whipping he richly deserves.
The court already had ruled that the facts he had submitted didn’t support the case he was trying to make. Even worse — from Rokita’s perspective — the court had said it wasn’t willing to stretch either the facts or the law to help the attorney general make his mean-spirited and frivolous case.
Rokita’s Democratic opponent in the November election, Destiny Wells, was quick to pounce.
“Today’s dismissal is a win for Hoosier taxpayers. Rokita’s litigation against Dr. Bernard and IU Health was nothing but a baseless witch hunt on taxpayers’ dimes. Rokita’s ruthless crusade against healthcare professionals is a weird obsession with the doctor-patient relationship and proves to do nothing for Hoosiers except open the door to government intrusion,” Wells said in a press release.
Wells’ criticism of Rokita’s grand-inquisitor-style pursuit of Bernard was valid, but her comment about the dismissal being a win for taxpayers misses the mark. It’s hard to see how Hoosiers gained anything of value from Rokita’s self-indulgent folly.
We likely never will know the full cost of his senseless pursuit of Bernard.
We know that Hoosier taxpayers have paid tens of thousands of dollars to the outside counsel Rokita hired to help him in his vendetta against Bernard.
We know that those lawyers paid with our money aided him while he shopped around for a venue that wouldn’t dismiss with snorts of derision and disgust his trumped-up accusations of wrongdoing on Bernard’s part.
We know that those lawyers were there when Rokita finally found a forum that wouldn’t treat his claims as the jokes they were — the state medical licensing board, which is made up of political appointees, some of whom had contributed to Rokita’s campaigns. That body determined Bernard violated patient confidentiality by revealing information routinely found in medical journals — and punished her by issuing a letter of reprimand and fining her $3,000.
It was a result that earned scorn from legal and medical ethics experts around the world.
Just having his Washington, D.C., counsel at Bernard’s hearing cost more than twice as much as Bernard’s fine.
We know these lawyers have defended Rokita as he — once, twice, three times — has been the subject of ethics investigations by the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission.
We know the first investigation ended with Rokita being gently disciplined. We know the second could have been avoided if Rokita had acted like a fully functioning adult and kept his mouth shut after he received a slap on the wrist for committing an offense that likely would have gotten any other lawyer suspended or even disbarred.
What we don’t know are the other costs Rokita’s fiscal foolishness has imposed on us. We don’t know how many other cases the legal staff in his office couldn’t take or didn’t give detailed attention to because they were tied up dealing with the stupid fights he started and couldn’t finish on his own.
We likely never will know those costs.
But we know enough.
We know that Todd Rokita treats with contempt the hours we have worked to earn the tax money he burns on legal battles that serve nothing but his own ego.
We know that he treats the law and the legal system he’s supposed to honor with even more contempt.
Most of all, we know he shouldn’t be entrusted with a crossing guard’s authority, much less that of the state’s top legal official.
