New York's Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department suspended Long Island lawyer Eliot Bloom for three years starting Wednesday, finding that he called two Nassau County prosecutor "sluts" and harassed an elderly client.

Bloom—who said he was misheard and never used the slur—responded Thursday by filing a federal civil rights complaint against the New York state court system and several of its top officials, in which he demanded $6 million in damages.

In the complaint, which was preceded by a required notice of claim filed in March, Bloom described the state's attorney grievance process as secretive and lacking due process.

He also objected to the nearly three-year length of his state grievance process, arguing that state officials deliberately prolonged the process and retaliated against him after he filed a 2016 complaint against a grievance committee lawyer.

Raymond Negron, the attorney representing Bloom in his federal suit, said Bloom was sad to have to take the case to federal court, but he had run out of options in the state system.

A spokesman for the state court system declined to comment Thursday, citing a policy against commenting on pending litigation.

The Second Department opinion suspending Bloom found that he neglected a legal matter entrusted to him by a client, who died in 2016 at age 93, and engaged in conduct that adversely reflected on his fitness as a lawyer by calling the female prosecutors "sluts."

In that incident, in 2016, the two prosecutors were standing outside a courtroom talking with a third lawyer when Bloom walked up and started talking to the third lawyer, who asked what he was doing at court, according to the Second Department opinion.

Bloom said he was "just doing a trial with these two sluts," and when one prosecutor objected, he told her to "stop being so sensitive, this is how I speak to ADAs," according to the opinion.

Bloom later testified that he had said "slugs," not "sluts," but the appellate judges found that explanation "patently incredible."

"The respondent's present misconduct, alongside his prior disciplinary history, reveals a recurring thread of deceit … His testimony lacked candor and showed no remorse," the judges wrote.

Mark Longo of Longo & D'Apice, who represented Bloom before the grievance committee, said outcomes like these are frustrating for lawyers who want to work as lawyers.

"We're allowed to not be happy about it, but (our opinions are) not really that important," Longo said.

Longo said he isn't involved with Bloom's federal complaint.