US supreme court rejects appeal from lawyer punished over effort to remove abusive priest

Richard Trahant, whose clients include dozens of victims of the New Orleans Catholic sexual abuse scandal. Photograph: Matthew Hinton/AP View image in fullscreen Richard Trahant, whose clients include dozens of victims of the New Orleans Catholic sexual abuse scandal. Photograph: Matthew Hinton/AP US supreme court rejects appeal from lawyer punished over effort to remove abusive priest Richard Trahant fined $400,000 over apparent violation of order in case of priest who admitted sexual misconduct The US supreme court has rejected an appeal from an attorney who was fined $400,000 after taking steps to get an abusive Roman Catholic priest removed as chaplain of a high school campus. In a notice on Monday, the supreme court’s justices indicated without explanation that they would not take up the case of Richard Trahant, whose clients include dozens of people victimized by a clergy abuse scandal that drove New Orleans’ Catholic archdiocese into federal bankruptcy court. Monday’s ruling all but closed the book on one of the most contentious chapters of that bankruptcy protection case, which the New Orleans archdiocese filed in 2020. Trahant’s work on the archdiocesan bankruptcy positioned him to learn that a New Orleans priest named Paul Hart had secretly admitted to his religious superiors that he had sexual contact with a 17-year-old girl in the early 1990s after meeting her through his duties as a clergyman. Hart was reported in 2012 to the church for that behavior and confessed to it during a confidential internal investigation, according to hundreds of legal documents previously reviewed by the Guardian. State law applicable in New Orleans sets the legal age of sexual consent at 17. The US’s Catholic bishops, nonetheless, had made 18 the age of consent under canon – or church – law in 2002. A board advising then New Orleans archbishop Gregory Aymond recommended removing Hart from public ministry, saying the case involved someone who was now considered a minor under canon law. But Aymond let Hart continue in ministry because the age of consent under canon law in the early 1990s was 16. Aymond then assigned Hart to a New Orleans Catholic high school – Brother Martin – when it asked for a chaplain in 2017. And Hart was still in that role when Trahant became aware of his past in late 2021 through his representation of clergy abuse claimants involved in the archdiocesan bankruptcy. Trahant was alarmed at the realization. Brother Martin is all-boys school, but girls participate in activities there, including on its dance team. He notified the principal of Brother Martin – who, coincidentally, was Trahant’s cousin – and informed him that Hart had “a credible allegation from [the] past that involved a minor”. The principal, Ryan Gallagher, later said in a deposition that Trahant would not elaborate, saying a protective order in bankruptcy court prevented him from giving specifics. Separately, Trahant emailed this journalist to keep Hart on his “radar” –