Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill Jr./courtesy photo

The Indiana Supreme Court suspended Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill's law license for 30 days after the state justices found he inappropriately touched four women in March 2018 in violation of local bar rules.

In the decision issued Monday, the justices found Hill's conduct compromised his fitness to serve as a lawyer and that his "criminal conduct was prejudicial to the administration of justice."

The suspension will begin on May 18 and his license will be automatically reinstated, according to the court's order. Hill said in a series of tweets Monday that he accepts the court's finding "with humility and respect," and chief deputy Aaron Negangard will take over his office's legal operations during the suspension.

The allegations against Hill, a Republican, first surfaced in July 2018 when a memo prepared by a law firm for lawmakers on Hill's alleged conduct leaked to the media. The four women he allegedly groped—three legislative assistants and a state legislator—filed a federal lawsuit against Hill, but no criminal charges have been filed.

The hearing officer in Hill's case recommended a 60-day suspension without automatic reinstatement, citing emails dismissive of the claims that were exchanged among Hill and his team after the allegations were leaked. Among those messages was the rejected suggestion by one staffer to describe the allegations against Hill, who is black, as a "lynching," according to the emails described in Monday's ruling.

The justices did take issue with Hill's attempt to block those emails from being submitted as evidence. They wrote the attorney general's "claim of privilege, based on the notion that the emails contain legal advice rendered to him in his capacity as attorney general by counsel within his office, is fundamentally at odds with respondent's insistence that only his private conduct is at issue and that his office employees participated in these team endeavors on their own personal time, using their own private email accounts, and in their personal capacities as respondent's political supporters."

"Simply put, respondent cannot have it both ways," they added. However, the court found the emails were "only minimally relevant to the question of an appropriate sanction."

"Although respondent strayed past an appropriate line in some of his conduct after the Taft Report was leaked, he was apologetic in his initial discussions with legislative leaders before the leak, and in a press release after the leak respondent maintained his innocence but simultaneously emphasized that '[v]ictims of sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment deserve to have their voices heard,'" the justices wrote.

The court also took issue with both Hill's attorneys and the Indiana Supreme Court's disciplinary commission's conduct, saying they are "compelled to note our strong disapproval and extreme disappointment with respect to the tenor of the parties' briefs in this case."

"There are many legitimate legal arguments to be made in this case, which makes the parties' inappropriate ad hominem attacks on one another a particularly frustrating distraction. We expect counsel to behave better in future cases," the court wrote.

Hill was represented by Indianapolis attorneys Donald Lundberg, James Voyles and Jennifer Lukemeyer.