Peter Nickles, the District of Columbia’s acting attorney general, has summarily fired the lawyer who was supposed to defend D.C.’s controversial gun-control laws before the U.S. Supreme Court this spring.
One of Nickles’ underlings sent Alan Morrison an e-mail Dec. 28, telling him to have his desk cleaned out by next Monday. Morrison, who has argued before the Supreme Court in several precedent-setting constitutional cases, was brought in last fall when then-Attorney General Linda Singer decided to appeal a lower court’s ruling that struck down D.C.’s gun laws.
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for March. D.C.’s opening brief is due Friday. It’s the first time the Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in a Second Amendment case in two generations. The court’s decision could affect gun-control laws around the country.
Mayor Adrian Fenty named Nickles his acting attorney general after Singer, resentful at the way Nickles had taken over the city’s legal affairs, resigned.
Morrison told The Examiner he was called into Nickles’ office on Dec. 21.
“He was concerned about what he called ‘the campaign’ in the press against him,” Morrison said of Nickles. “He asked me whether I was part of the campaign and said it would be ‘absolutely disqualifying’ if I was.”
Nickles, a longtime family friend of Fenty and the mayor’s most trusted adviser, wouldn’t discuss Morrison’s exit or Morrison’s account of it. But he said the firing wouldn’t affect the District’s case.
“We’ve had very experienced people working on the brief and it has my strong endorsement,” Nickles told The Examiner. “This is a significant legal team.”
The sacking surprised members of D.C.’s tightly knit appellate bar and drew condemnations from Morrison’s colleagues.
“It’s enough to make you sick,” said Brian Wolfman, who succeeded Morrison at Public Citizen. “Alan’s a big boy and he could see that he’d have to leave the position eventually but to fire him in this way seems like a case of egomania.”
Ralph Nader, founder of Public Citizen, sent an open letter to Fenty on Wednesday demanding that he fire Nickles.
Some D.C. Council members shared in the outrage. Phil Mendelson, D-at large, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called Morrison’s firing “crazy,” and Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3 and a law professor, said she was worried about Nickles’ judgment.
“This almost sounds like some kind of Tammany Hall purge,” she said. “And it harms the District. That’s not a good first step.”
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