LORETTA RUSH SUDDENLY HAS A LOT TO SAY: LEADERSHIP—OR DEFLECTION?

As questions mount about Indiana’s judiciary and Rush’s own financial disclosure, the longtime Chief Justice has become an increasingly visible champion of trust, transparency and accountability. So many want her gone—retired, resigned or impeached preferably. Her record was never good, really poor, and she was never competent. History doesn’t lie!

By Hoosier Enquirer Editorial Team

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Chief Justice Loretta Rush suddenly seems to be everywhere.

She is talking about public confidence. She is talking about integrity and transparency. She is talking about judicial security, civility and access to justice. She is addressing the lawyer shortage, defending the judiciary against criticism and increasingly presenting herself as the public face of an institution confronting one crisis after another.

Some of that activity has obvious and legitimate explanations. Indiana has a serious shortage of lawyers. Judges have received threats. Tippecanoe Superior Judge Steve Meyer and his wife were shot in their home. Rush herself has faced an alleged threat. No responsible newspaper should minimize any of that.

But after 12 years of Rush running Indiana’s judiciary, Hoosiers are entitled to ask whether they are also watching something else: an increasingly public effort to defend an institution—and a Chief Justice—receiving uncomfortable scrutiny.

HE cannot know Rush’s private motivation. We can observe the pattern.

And the pattern deserves examination.

THE CHIEF JUSTICE DISCOVERS THE BULLY PULPIT

Rush has increasingly emphasized “public trust and confidence.” After the violence surrounding the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, she spoke publicly about civility and the rule of law. When new Supreme Court administrative leadership was announced in July, Rush emphasized transparency, integrity and financial stewardship.

She has also acknowledged increased criticism of Indiana’s judiciary.

“I think public debate on the judiciary is fine,” Rush has said. “I just wish it was always correct.”

That is an interesting complaint from the leader of an institution that possesses enormous authority over Indiana lawyers, judges and litigants.

HE’s response is straightforward: Then make the debate correct. Release information. Answer questions. Explain discrepancies. Demonstrate that insiders and outsiders play under the same rules.

Public relations cannot substitute for public accountability.

LEADERSHIP OR DEFLECTION?

Rush’s public activity can reasonably be viewed in two different ways.

One interpretation is straightforward: an experienced chief justice is confronting genuine problems and using her position to address them.

The other is less flattering.

After more than a decade leading Indiana’s judicial branch, Rush now presides over a system confronting a severe lawyer shortage, persistent access-to-justice problems, extraordinary concerns about judicial security and continuing questions about how Indiana’s judiciary disciplines its own.

Against that backdrop, Rush’s repeated emphasis on trust, confidence, integrity and transparency can look less like a new reform agenda and more like institutional damage control.

That is HE’s interpretation—not an established fact about Rush’s private motives. Readers can decide for themselves.

But the timing makes the question worth asking.

THE $13,000 QUESTION

There is also an accountability issue much closer to Rush herself.

HE previously reported that Rush listed $13,000 in Purdue University compensation on a Statement of Economic Interests while Indiana Gateway compensation information showed $24,433.

The difference is $11,433.

Rush’s office reportedly characterized the discrepancy as a clerical error.

That explanation shouldn’t end the inquiry.

Financial disclosures exist precisely because public officials shouldn’t be permitted to tell citizens simply to trust them. The disclosure is supposed to provide the transparency.

So who made the error? What documentation was used to prepare Rush’s filing? What did Rush review before signing it? What exactly did Purdue pay her? Why did the numbers differ? Was the discrepancy investigated independently?

And most importantly, was Rush aware of the correct compensation when she certified the disclosure?

Those aren’t rhetorical questions. They are factual questions capable of factual answers.

GABE WHITLEY DIDN’T GET A “CLERICAL ERROR” PASS

That distinction has particular significance for Hoosier Enquirer.

HE editor Gabriel “Gabe” Whitley pleaded guilty to making materially false statements in reports submitted to the Federal Election Commission.

Federal prosecutors didn’t prosecute him merely because his signature appeared beneath somebody else’s paperwork.

According to his plea agreement and the Justice Department, Whitley admitted that he knowingly reported contributions that hadn’t occurred, including fictitious contributors and a purported $100,000 personal campaign loan.

He received three months in federal prison.

HE isn’t hiding that history.

Whitley’s conviction was under the federal false-statements statute rather than Indiana’s perjury law, and his admission of knowledge is legally important. Those differences mean his conviction doesn’t automatically establish criminal liability by Rush.

But Whitley’s experience demonstrates what government does when it takes questionable filings seriously.

It investigates the underlying numbers.

It determines who supplied them.

It determines what the signer knew.

It determines whether the discrepancy was material.

Then it applies the law.

So HE asks: Did anybody conduct that kind of investigation into the Chief Justice’s Purdue disclosure?

If so, release the result.

If not, explain why not.

A CRISIS THAT GREW DURING HER TENURE

Rush now describes Indiana’s lawyer shortage as a “deepening crisis.”

She isn’t exaggerating the underlying problem. Indiana ranks 43rd nationally in lawyers per capita. Two Indiana law schools closed during the past decade, and some counties have only a handful of practicing attorneys.

But Rush became Chief Justice in 2014.

She cannot fairly be blamed for every demographic change, law-school closing or decision by young attorneys to practice elsewhere. Neither can a leader of 12 years plausibly present herself as someone who just arrived to discover the problem.

If access to justice is now a crisis, Indiana should examine what its judicial leadership did during the years when that crisis was developing.

What warnings existed?

When did the Supreme Court recognize the trend?

What corrective measures were attempted?

Which ones failed?

Those questions are considerably more useful than another speech about public confidence.

VIOLENCE IS REAL. SO IS ACCOUNTABILITY.

Rush’s concern about judicial security deserves different treatment.

After Judge Meyer and his wife were shot, Rush told Indiana judges:

“I worry about the safety of all our judges.”

She organized a security webinar attended by nearly 200 judges. Earlier survey results showed that more than 150 of 214 responding Indiana judges had experienced threats.

That is alarming.

HE draws an absolute distinction here: Nobody has a right to threaten, intimidate or attack a judge because of a judicial decision.

But Rush shouldn’t confuse—or permit others to confuse—physical threats with aggressive scrutiny.

Investigating a judge isn’t threatening a judge.

Questioning disciplinary decisions isn’t violence.

Examining a Chief Justice’s financial disclosure isn’t intimidation.

And asking whether Indiana has developed an insulated judicial establishment isn’t an attack on the rule of law.

Those activities are part of the rule of law.

WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?

Rush isn’t simply another Indiana judge.

She leads the Supreme Court. She has substantial administrative responsibility for Indiana’s judicial branch. The Supreme Court exercises authority over Indiana attorneys and their discipline, while Rush also occupies the position Indiana’s constitutional structure gives the Chief Justice within the Judicial Qualifications Commission.

Rush didn’t personally design all of those arrangements.

But she has operated within—and led—the system for more than a decade.

That makes her sudden enthusiasm for words such as transparency, integrity and public confidence especially worthy of examination.

Public confidence isn’t created by repeating “public confidence.”

Transparency isn’t created by announcing “transparency.”

Accountability isn’t created by disciplining people outside the institution while declining to examine uncomfortable questions inside it.

Those principles have to be demonstrated.

PERHAPS HOOSIERS ARE SIMPLY LOOKING MORE CLOSELY

That may ultimately explain why Rush appears more publicly active.

Perhaps nothing about the Chief Justice changed.

Perhaps the audience did.

Independent news organizations, lawyers, litigants and ordinary Hoosiers have tools that make court orders, disciplinary records, government payroll information and judicial financial disclosures easier to compare than they once were.

Institutions accustomed to speaking primarily to themselves now operate in an environment where outsiders can check the numbers.

Rush’s response has been increasingly public: talk about confidence, talk about integrity, talk about transparency, talk about access to justice and vigorously defend the institution against criticism.

HE sees another possibility worth considering.

The more questions Indiana’s judicial establishment faces, the more its longtime leader appears determined to control the conversation about the institution she leads.

That may be energetic leadership.

It may be institutional damage control.

It may contain elements of both.

But speeches shouldn’t decide the question.

The record should.

ONE STANDARD

Rush wants Hoosiers to trust Indiana’s judiciary.

Then give them reasons to trust it.

Explain the Purdue discrepancy completely. Release the underlying documentation.

Establish whether the $13,000 figure was an innocent error or something more. Show how complaints involving judges and judicial insiders are investigated. Publish meaningful disciplinary statistics. Explain disparities rather than dismissing criticism.

And apply exactly the same standards of candor to the Chief Justice that Indiana expects from every lawyer appearing before her court.

Gabe Whitley’s experience demonstrates that government takes knowingly false official filings seriously.

Power should not change that principle.

Neither should a black robe.

If Rush wants public confidence, she should welcome the scrutiny necessary to earn it.

Because sometimes the loudest declaration that an institution deserves trust comes precisely when people have started asking whether it does. The SCOIN is in crisis!