John Eastman is asking the Supreme Court to help him keep his law license, after California’s bar court said his disbarment is needed “to protect the public, the courts, and the legal profession” following his misconduct in representing Donald Trump and his 2020 campaign.

The bar court reached that conclusion after considering the case of Eastman, a law professor who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, against the backdrop of what the court called his “attempts to actively undermine the results of an election to the most powerful office in the United States with the goal of delaying or invalidating the lawful installation of his client’s electoral opponent and thereby keep his client in office.”

The bar court agreed that Eastman committed several instances of professional misconduct, including trying to mislead the courts, the public and Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, whom Trump tried to pressure to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden through the vice president’s role in presiding over the Senate’s certification of the election results.

“Eastman made numerous false claims to help accomplish the conspiracy’s shared objective: to have former Vice-President Pence run interference on the electoral vote count with the goal to have him reject or delay the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021,” the court said.

In an opinion affirming a hearing judge’s culpability findings last year, the court also agreed with the judge that Eastman was not culpable for one of the counts alleged by bar authorities, due to a lack of evidence that his statements contributed to the assault and breach of the U.S. Capitol.

Eastman turned to the justices in Washington after the California Supreme Court made his disbarment official earlier this year. Announcing the filing of his high court petition, his lawyers said the case isn’t about relitigating the 2020 election but rather “whether a state can strip a lawyer of his license — and his livelihood — because government officials disagreed with the legal arguments he made on behalf of his client.”

They said that if it can happen to Eastman, then it can happen to any lawyer who takes on unpopular causes.

In the petition, they said Supreme Court review is needed “to remove the threat the decision below poses not just to the First Amendment but to the ability of attorneys fiercely to advocate for their clients without fear of politicized disbarment.”

The Supreme Court has discretion over whether to grant review of a petition like Eastman’s. It takes at least four justices on the nine-member bench to agree to consider a case.

Thomas previously recused himself from an Eastman-related case, but he did not explain why, so it is unclear whether he will weigh in on this petition. If Thomas recuses himself from this one, too, then that could make it more difficult for his former clerk to attract enough votes for review.

The state will have a chance to oppose review before the justices decide whether to consider the case. We could get an answer one way or the other this fall, but the high court is not on a deadline to decide.

Eastman has filed briefs in several high-profile Supreme Court cases over the years, including supporting the Trump administration’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, which a divided court rejected in June.

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