TUSD board member Rachael Sedgwick is working to put her law degree to use after an Arizona Supreme Court committee recommended she not be admitted to practice law, citing concerns about her βdeficiencies in honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, reliability and respect for the law and legal institutions,β records show.
Sedgwick, who has publicly contemplated a run for a seat on the Pima County Board of Supervisors, says her bid to be a licensed lawyer in the state was affected by a flawed process and points out that sheβs been granted a new review. βThe Committee made a terrible mistake,β Sedgwick said in a text, βwhich is why my petition for a new and proper hearing has been granted, to be scheduled soon. In other words, my application has not been denied.β
The committee on character and fitness decided unanimously in February that Sedgwick βdoes not possess the requisite character and fitness to be admitted to practice law in Arizonaβ after she failed to disclose on her application that she was detained by police in 2006 for driving under the influence of alcohol, court documents say.
The Supreme Court later granted her a new hearing because of an error the committee made on the original hearingβs notification. The committeeβs decision has been vacated in lieu of a new hearing, which has not yet been scheduled.
When applicants take the state bar exam to apply for their law license, they also go through a process that examines their character and fitness.
If there is anything that could be problematic, the applicant appears before a committee, like Sedgwick did, and the committee makes a recommendation on admittance to the bar. If the applicant files a petition to challenge the recommendation β as in Sedgwickβs case β the state Supreme Court decides how to handle it.
The court received 594 character and fitness applications during the fiscal year that ended June 30, said Aaron Nash, a Supreme Court spokesman.
In 2018, 28 applicants were referred for character and fitness hearings, according to an annual report by an advisory committee to the Supreme Court. Of those, four were denied admission to the Bar, five were admitted conditionally, five withdrew their applications and 14 were admitted.
Sedgwick failed to disclose being detained on suspicion of driving while intoxicated on her character and fitness report, records show. The committee originally recommended the Supreme Court deny her license for this and other reasons after a February character and fitness hearing.
Sedgwick requested in June that the court grant her a new hearing, submitting a 36-page document that responded to the committeeβs many concerns. The committee wrote that it found all but one of her arguments to be βnonmeritorious.β
However, it conceded that its original notice of hearing did not clearly outline all the areas it would question Sedgwick on.
She was questioned about topics that included unlawful conduct, making false statements, misconduct in employment and mental emotional stability, according to Supreme Court documents on the committeeβs recommendation for denial filed on May 2.
When Sedgwick was arrested in 2006 in Nogales, Arizona, on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol she was taken to the police station, where she refused to do a breath test as instructed, the police report says.
She also refused to give a blood sample and was βrude and insulting to the officers,β the documents continue. The police obtained a search warrant to take her blood, which showed a 0.171 alcohol content, court documents show.
The legal limit in Arizona has been 0.08, and between 0.15 and 0.19 is considered an extreme DUI.
The court documents say βMs. Sedgwick was ultimately not convicted of any crime; the reason for that is unclear.β The police report says the case was referred to the city attorney. Nogales Municipal Court destroys records that are more than five years old.
Sedgwick told the committee in her request for a new hearing that not attaching the form disclosing being stopped for alleged drunk driving was an accident.
She wouldnβt answer specific questions from the Star about the incident.
However, she told the committee that although she thought she disclosed the incident, she didnβt include the police report because she wasnβt formally charged with a crime, court documents say.
Sedgwick also failed to disclose information about a 2012 felony-level assault charge from her application to law school at the University of Arizona in 2014.
The omission was cited as another reason the committee had recommended the Supreme Court deny her law license, court documents say.
In that incident, Sedgwick got into an argument with her then-boyfriend while they were drinking. βThe argument escalated, and she hit the victim on the head with a glass, causing a cut to his forehead,β court documents say. She avoided conviction by completing a diversion program that included anger management classes.
Although Sedgwick disclosed the incident on her character report while applying to the bar, on her law school application she wrote that she had not been charged with a felony, court documents say. In her appeal for a new hearing, she said she didnβt disclose the incident because βat the time, she didnβt think of it as being charged with a felony,β court documents say.
Other incidents were noted in the committeeβs initial recommendation to deny her legal license, including:
- In a December 2016 incident reported by the Tucson Weekly, staff at a downtown lounge asked her to leave following an altercation in which she told them she had just been elected to the TUSD governing board and had more than 5,000 Facebook friends.
- In a 2016 email, she told TUSD principals to disregard a directive by board member Adelita Grijalva.
- In 2017 she said βwhite supremacy rulesβ during a meeting with a constituent, the court documents say.
The committee wrote that it considered βthe number of overall incidents of unlawful conduct and abusive behavior and the fact that they occurred over the course of many years.β
It also found that she provided excuses for her past behavior. In its original decision, the committee suggested that Sedgwick reapply for her license in two years, concluding she βhas deficiencies in honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, reliability, and respect for the law and legal institutions.β
After sending a comment to the Star by text saying the committee had erred and she would get a new hearing soon, Sedgwick said she was too busy for a phone interview.
Sedgwick was elected to the TUSD board in November 2016 and is up for reelection in 2020. She has made public statements about running for the Pima County Board of Supervisors representing District 5, a seat currently held by longtime board member Richard ElΓas. After TUSD board member Mark Stegeman resigned last week, Sedgwick told the Star that her run for supervisors was up in the air and she would like to see how βthings developβ before deciding which post to seek.
