US Supreme Court rejects appeal from lawyer fined over clergy-abuse fight

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from New Orleans lawyer Richard Trahant, leaving in place a $400,000 sanction imposed in the Archdiocese of New Orleans bankruptcy case.

The court’s refusal, reported on July 1, 2026, means the bankruptcy court’s penalty remains in force. By the time Trahant sought Supreme Court review, interest had increased the total to about $460,000.

The dispute sits at the intersection of confidentiality rules in bankruptcy court and a lawyer’s claim that he was trying to warn a school about a priest with a history of sexual abuse.

The sanction

Federal bankruptcy judge Meredith Grabill imposed the sanction in 2022 after finding that Trahant violated a protective order.

Trahant has long argued that he did not breach secrecy rules. He says he acted to protect children, not to disclose protected material for improper reasons.

Lower courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, left the sanction intact before the case reached the Supreme Court.

The high court’s refusal to intervene now leaves Trahant without a direct Supreme Court path to overturn the penalty.

How the dispute started

Trahant represented clergy-abuse survivors in the New Orleans archdiocese’s Chapter 11 case, which was filed in 2020.

During that work, he learned that former priest Paul Hart had admitted to sexual contact with a 17-year-old girl in the early 1990s.

Hart had been assigned as chaplain at Brother Martin High School in New Orleans in 2017.

In late 2021, around New Year’s Eve, Trahant alerted the school’s principal, Ryan Gallagher, about Hart’s background.

Hart was removed from the school in January 2022.

That warning became the basis for a wider legal fight over whether Trahant had crossed a line by sharing information that the bankruptcy court treated as confidential.

What the case has meant

The dispute has become one of the more contentious episodes in the New Orleans archdiocese bankruptcy, where survivor lawyers, church officials and bankruptcy-court orders have repeatedly collided.

One major issue has been whether a confidentiality order should shield information when an attorney says a child may be at risk.

Another is due process: Trahant has argued that the sanction was unjust and that he was punished despite acting out of concern for students.

Reporting on the case has also said investigators found evidence supporting Trahant’s claim that he was not the source for a newspaper article about Hart, though that did not change the sanction.

Four of Trahant’s clients were removed from a clergy-abuse survivors committee during the dispute, adding to the fallout inside the bankruptcy process.

Broader bankruptcy backdrop

The archdiocese later agreed to a roughly $305 million settlement with abuse survivors, but the bankruptcy has continued to generate delays and disputes over administration.

That broader settlement context matters because the Trahant sanction is not just a personal penalty. It also reflects the continuing tension between legal secrecy and public warnings in clergy-abuse litigation.

The case has broader implications for advocates who say they need room to warn schools and families about alleged abusers, even when those warnings arise from sealed proceedings.

For now, the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal leaves the sanction, accrued interest and related bankruptcy-court consequences in place.

No further direct appeal path is apparent at the Supreme Court on this sanction, though remaining disputes tied to the archdiocese bankruptcy can still play out in bankruptcy-court administration or collateral litigation.

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