Tyler Vose: Alaska’s contempt problem – when telling the truth becomes a punishable offense

By TYLER VOSE

Let’s start with the fine print the Alaska Bar Association hopes you never really think about. 

If you download the Alaska Bar’s official Attorney Grievance Form, buried on page five is Section 11. Before your complaint is even considered, you are required to sign the following statement: 

“I understand that, under the Alaska Bar Rules adopted by the Alaska Supreme Court, I and other persons contacted during the course of a grievance investigation have a duty to maintain the confidentiality of the investigation prior to the initiation of formal proceedings.  

“I also understand that it will be regarded as a contempt of the Supreme Court to breach this confidentiality in any way; although I also understand it is not a breach of confidentiality for me or a person contacted to consult with an attorney.”  

That is not a polite request. That is a gag order backed by the threat of contempt of court. 

And it is wildly unconstitutional. 

In an honest justice system, here is what you would expect to see on a grievance form.  

You would see language reminding you not to defame anyone, not to disclose protected victim information, and not to obstruct an ongoing investigation or trial. You might see a statement that the Bar’s own internal records stay confidential during the early phase of an investigation. That is perfectly reasonable. 

What you would not see is a blanket command that you, the complainant, and “other persons contacted” must “maintain the confidentiality of the investigation” on pain of contempt of the state’s highest court. 

You would not see a rule that says, in effect, you can whisper to your own lawyer, but you may not talk publicly about the fact that you went to the Bar at all. 

This is not just sloppy wording on a form. It comes straight out of Alaska Bar Rule 22(b), which imposes a “duty to maintain the confidentiality” of investigations on complainants and witnesses and then elevates a breach of that duty to contempt of the Alaska Supreme Court. The Court did not just tolerate this language; it adopted it. It took the extraordinary step of turning citizen speech about complaints into potential contempt of court. 

That is classic prior restraint. It is a content‑based, speaker‑based gag: the state singles out a particular topic (your bar grievance) and a particular class of speakers (complainants and witnesses) and threatens them with punishment if they speak. 

This is not theoretical. The Bar doubles down on the same message on its public‑facing website, telling would‑be complainants, “You may discuss the issues in your complaint but you cannot notify others that you have filed a complaint.” In other words, you can talk about what the lawyer did to you, but the moment you say “I filed a grievance,” you are, by their own language, flirting with contempt. 

That is how a cartel behaves.

People tend to think of corruption as a smoking‑gun bribe. But the more destructive, day‑to‑day version is quieter. 

Little “c” corruption is what happens when the rules of the game are quietly bent to protect insiders from scrutiny. It is when the system’s first instinct is not “How do we find truth?” but “How do we control the narrative?”  

Look at what this gag rule actually accomplishes in practice. 

It isolates complainants. Most regular Alaskans who muster the courage to file a grievance against an attorney are already intimidated. They are standing alone against someone with a bar number, a robe, or a Rolodex. Then, as a condition of entry, the Bar and the Supreme Court tell them: you now have a “duty” to keep quiet, and if you “breach this confidentiality in any way,” we can treat that as contempt. 

That language is not there to protect you, but to there to protect them. 

It insulates lawyers and judges from public accountability. If you cannot even say “I filed a bar complaint against Attorney X,” you cannot warn other potential clients. You cannot talk to the press without wondering if you will be dragged into court. You cannot be part of any broader, public conversation about patterns of misconduct, because each complainant has been told to shut up in his or her own silo. 

As someone who has spent more than a decade chasing public corruption cases in Detroit, Puerto Rico, and Alaska, and then lived through retaliation inside the FBI Anchorage Field Office, this pattern is painfully familiar. When insiders are threatened for talking, the goal is never “integrity.” The goal is always “control.” 

And here is the bitter irony: this is happening in a state whose own Supreme Court has not hesitated to strike down other speech restrictions when they burden the kind of public discourse it likes. In Club Sinrock, the Court held that local rules targeting expressive conduct in adult entertainment triggered strong free‑speech protections. In Vote Yes for Alaska’s Fair Share, it invalidated limits on paying petition circulators, recognizing that burdens on initiative work are burdens on core political speech. When it is oil taxes or strip clubs, the Court finds its First Amendment voice. When it is ordinary citizens talking about misconduct by lawyers, Bar Rule 22(b) tells them to shut up or risk contempt. 

Alaska likes to brag about its rugged individualism. But our legal institutions are some of the most thin‑skinned and self‑protective in the country. 

Let’s be blunt. Alaska does not have a justice system. Alaska has a near third‑world legal system in which a small, tightly knit class of attorneys and judges wield enormous power with very little external oversight. 

A true justice system invites sunlight. It understands that public confidence comes from transparency and the ability to criticize those in power without fear of reprisal. It is comfortable with the idea that citizens might write about their experiences with lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and even bar regulators. 

By contrast, the Alaska Supreme Court and the Bar have chosen a model that looks a lot more like internal security than justice. File a grievance, and the first thing they do is conscript you into a cone of silence. They do not simply say, “We will keep our records confidential while we sort this out.” They say, “You too must be confidential, or you risk contempt.” 

That is upside‑down. The citizen who reports alleged misconduct is not the problem. The lawyer’s conduct is the potential problem. Yet the rule trains its fire on the citizen’s speech, not the lawyer’s behavior. 

Some defenders of this rule will wave a hand and say, “Relax, no one really enforces that.” That dodge is as revealing as it is cynical. 

First, if a rule is so obviously unconstitutional and overbroad that you have to promise it will not be enforced, why is it on the books? The answer is simple: its primary function is to chill speech. The threat alone is enough to do the work. 

Second, people like me know exactly how vague, discretionary threats get weaponized. During my time as an FBI special agent and later as a protected whistleblower, I watched internal rules and policies selectively enforced against those who raised uncomfortable questions. You do not need a written “retaliation policy” to retaliate; you just need a toolbox of flexible rules and a culture willing to use them. 

This bar gag rule is the same kind of tool. Maybe it is rarely invoked. Maybe it never has been. That does not make it harmless. It means it is held in reserve for when someone’s story is just a little too resonant, a little too credible, or a little too dangerous to the club. 

And it sends a crystal‑clear message to every potential complainant: enter this process, and your First Amendment rights are now subject to the sufferance of the very system you are trying to hold accountable. 

From a constitutional standpoint, this should not be a close call. 

Across the country, courts have already struck down or gutted similar gag rules in bar and professional discipline systems. Federal and state judges have recognized that while a bar can keep its own files confidential during an investigation, it cannot criminalize a complainant’s truthful speech about filing a complaint. The First Amendment does not evaporate the moment you mail something to a regulatory agency. 

Alaska’s own constitutional protections for free speech are, on paper, even stronger than the federal baseline. Our Supreme Court has talked a big game about strict scrutiny, core political speech, and the heavy presumption against prior restraint. In cases like Alsworth v. Seybert, it has said prior restraints are almost never permissible except in the narrowest, fully adjudicated circumstances. Yet in this corner of the law, the Court quietly adopted a bar rule that does exactly what it claims to forbid: it gags citizens from speaking about matters of obvious public concern before anything has been adjudicated at all. 

If the First Amendment means anything in Alaska, it must mean that an ordinary person can say, “I filed a bar complaint against an attorney,” and can talk publicly about that experience without looking over their shoulder for a contempt citation from the same Court that licensed that attorney in the first place.  

That should not be a radical position. That is civic hygiene 101. 

When you zoom out, Section 11 is not an isolated problem. It is another tile in a larger mosaic. 

It sits alongside secret judicial complaint processes, cozy relationships between prosecutors and judges, and a professional culture in which protecting the institution routinely takes precedence over doing right by ordinary Alaskans. It rhymes with what I experienced inside the FBI Anchorage office: leadership more focused on silencing internal critics and preserving their own reputations and careers than fixing real problems that affected cases, sources, and ultimately public safety. 

When institutions are sick, they reach for the same tools. Secrecy. Threats. Process over substance. And they always justify it in the same way: “Trust us. We need this power to preserve confidence in the system.” 

No. Confidence built on fear and enforced silence is counterfeit. 

If the Alaska Bar and the Supreme Court truly believed in the integrity of the discipline process, they would welcome public discussion by complainants. They would want patterns of misconduct to be visible so that they could act on them. They would be proud to have their work scrutinized. 

Instead, they tell you: you have a “duty” to keep quiet, and if you do not, you may be held in contempt. 

That is all you need to know about whose interests this rule actually serves. 

So, what now? 

At a minimum, Alaskans should insist that Section 11, Bar Rule 22(b), and the related website language be repealed or rewritten to do what a legitimate confidentiality rule should do: bind the Bar’s own staff, protect narrowly defined categories of sensitive information, and leave complainants free to speak about their own experiences. 

If the Court and the Bar refuse, then someone, at some point, is going to have to force the issue in court. It will take a citizen with the courage to say, “I am not going to surrender my speech rights as the price of reporting misconduct,” and a legal team willing to push the First Amendment question hard, using the Court’s own free‑speech precedents against it. 

In the meantime, here is the question I would put to readers: 

If you knew that filing a grievance against an Alaska attorney would require you to sign away your right to talk about it under threat of contempt, would you still do it? And if not, what does that tell you about who this system is really built to protect?

Tyler Vose is a veteran investigator and public accountability advocate. After blowing the whistle on FBI Anchorage, he has continued to help Alaskans navigate the dangers of government retaliation and corruption, and calls for immediate, meaningful state reform.  Tyler owns and operates Denali Defense Solutions and Veridian Strategies.   

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